PZ 3 


.T325 


Fi2 


COPY 1 




• rj‘j: t *. 


* * Jj •» f 


;»• 

» Li ^ 


FT tIEPDE 
GenCol 1 


; * ‘ 'i f’ 




! • 

\^f‘ 


1 





0 





library of congress 


Shelf 


UNITKl) STATI- 


N OF AMERICA 










I 




jrao. XOU. ^ 0 i O OEITTS. 




LOVELL’S LIBRARY -CATALOG DE. ! 


I » I? 

Hy^rion, by n. W. LoTip:feliow..20 
5^ Outre-Mer, by H. VV. Loiigfeiiow.JiO 

8. The Happy Boy, "by BjOrnson....lO 

4. Arne, by BjOruPon. . . 30 

* 5. Frankensttiiii by Mrs., Sheiley ... .30 

6. U'be LjiBt of ihelMohicjms^r 1.20 

7. §lytie, by Josefjh Hatton /t ..1 20 

8. The Moonstone} by *. dlliiiBi P'tft. 10 

9. ThO Moonstone, by Co)lins,*P’tn.l0 

10. Oliver Twist, by Charles Dickens. 20 

11. The Coming Race, by Lyiton....30 

1? Leila, by Loni Lytton 10 

13. The Throe Spaniards, by Walker. 20 

14. TheTricks of the GreeksUnvelled.20 
I 15. L’Abbe Constantin, by Halcvy.. 20 
I 16, Freckles, by R. F Redcliir.. .;20 
5 T7. The Dark Colleen, by Harriett Jay .20 
f 18. They Were Marrital by Walter 

( Besant and dames Rice 10 

i 19, Seekers after God, by Farrar 20 

y 20. The Spanish Nun by DcQuincey.lO 
j 21. TheGreCn Mountain Boys 20 

22. Fleurette, by Eugene Scribe 20 

23. Second Thouorhts, by Broughton. 20 

24. The New Magdalen, by Collins.. 20 

2 Divorce, by Margaret I.ee 20 

20. Life of Washington, by Henley.. 20 

27. Social Etiquette, by Mrs. Saville.35 

28. Single Heart and Double Face.. 10 

29. In ne, by Carl Detlef 20 

30. Mce Versa, by F. Austey 20 

31. Ernest Maltravcrs, by Lord Lytton20 

32. The Haunted House and Calderon • 
' the Courtier, by Lord Lytton.. 10 

83. John Halifax, by Miss Muiock. ..20 

54. 800 Leagues on the^Arnazon......30 

55. The Cryptogram, by Jules Verne. 10 

86. Life of Marion, by Horry.... ....20 

87. Paul and Virginia. 30 

28. Tale of Two Cities, by Dickens.. 20 

89. The Hermits, by Kingsley 20 

40. An Adventure in Thule,. and Mar- 
riage of Moira Fergus, Black .10 

%- 4 1 .A Marriagein-feUgli. -Lif e^, 20 

42. Robin, by Mrs. Parr 20 

43. Two on a Tower, byThos Hardy.20 

44. Rasselas, by Samuel Johnson.... 10 

45. AJlce, or, the Mysteries, being 

Part II. of Ernest; MaUravers..20 
46..T>uke of Kandos, by A. Mathey...20, 

47. Baron Munchausen 10 

4S A l*rincess of Thule, by Black. 20 
49. The Secret Despatch, by Grant, 20 
' 60. Early Dav« of Christianity, by 
\ Carwm Farra»',*D D.> Part I: . . 20 
Early Days of Christianity, Pt. 11,20 
M. Vicar of Waketield, by Goldsmith. 10 

62. lTogre/?8 and Poverty, by Henry 

George ... 20 

63. The Spy, by • Cooper ...... 20 

64. East Lynne, ny Mrs. Wood... 20 

65. A Strange Story , by Lord Lytton. . . 20 

66*. Adam Brde, by Eliot, Parti 15 

Adam Bcfle, Part IL 15 

67. The Golden Shaft, by Gibbon. . . ,20 

68. Portia, by The Duchess, . . . ; . , . .20 

69. Last Days of-PdTupeii, by lytton.. 20 
OJ.'The Two DuchesHos, by Mat hey. ,20 

I .dl, Tom Brown’s School Days.... 20 


62. The Wooing O’t, byMrs.Alek* | 

ander. Parti . 35 

The Wooing O’t. Part n., -.IS 

03. The Vendetta, by Balzac 20 

64.^11ypafVi,by Mias.King^>ley,P’tI.16 
Hypatia, by Kingsley, Part XL... 15 

I 05. Selma, ||by Mfe. J.C., Smith 15 

6(5. Margant and her Bridesmaids. .20 
. 07. Horse^Shoe Robinson, Part I. ...15 
Horse Shoe Robinson, Part IX. . . 1 5 
•68. Gulliver’s Travels, by Swift 20 

69. Amos Barton, by Gemge Eliot. ..10 

70. The Berber, by W. E.Mayo 20 

71. Silas Marner, ny Ge.orgc Eliot... 10 

72. The Queen of the Oouuty..,..,..20 

73. Life of Cromwell, by H<*od...l5 

74. Jane Eyre, by.Charlotte Bronte. 20 

75. Cliild'H History of England 20 

76. Molly Bawn, by The Duchess... 20 

77. Pil lone, by William BergsOe 15 

78. Phyllis, by The Duchess 20 

79. Romola, by Geo. Eliot, Part I. . .15 
' Romola, by Geo. Eliot, Part II. .15 

89. Science in Short Chapters 20 

81. Zanonl,by LordLv'ton... 20 

82. A Daughter of Ileth... 20 

83. The Right and Wrong Uses of 

the Bible, R. Heber^ewton...20 

84. Night and Morning,- Pt. 1 15 

Night ami Morning, Part II 15 

85. Shandon Bells, by Wm. Black.. 20 

86. Monica, by Die Duphess 10 

87. Heart and Science, by Collins. . .20 

88. The Golden Calf, by Braddon. . .20 

89. The Dean’s ^Daughter 20 

90. Mrs. Geoffrey, by The Duchess.. 20 

91. Pickw'ick J'apers, Part 1 20 

Pickwick Papers, Part 11 20 

92. Airy, Fairy Lilian, The Duchess. 20 i 

93. McLeod or Dare, by Wm. Black 20 » 

94. Tempest Tossed, by Tilton. P’tl 20 i 
Tempest Tossed, by Tilton, P’t II 90 j 

96. Letters from High Latitudes, by 
-DordDufferiu 20 

96. Gideon Fleyce, by Lucy 20 

97. India and Ceylon, by E. Hteckel. .20 

95. The Gypsy Queen 20 

99. The Admiral’s Ward 20 

100. Niraport, by Fi. L, Bynner,P’tI..15 
Nimport, by E. L. Bynner, P'tll.15 

•101. Harry Holbrooke 20 

302. Tritons, by E.L. Bynner, P’tl. . .35 
Tritons, by E.L. Bynner, P til.. 15 

lOS. Let Nothing You Dismay, by 
'Walter Besant 10 

104. Lady And ley’s Secret, by Miss 

M. B. Braddon 20 

105. Woman’s Place To-day, by Mrs. ^ 

LlUie Deverenx Biake 20 

106. Dunallan, by Kennedy, Parti. . .15 
Dunailan, by Kennedy, Part J I. .15 

107. Housekeeping and Home-mak- 

ing, by Marion Harland 15 

108. No Ngw Thing, by W.K. Norris. 20 

109. The Spoopendyke Papers 20 

UO. False Hopes, by GolcfwinBmlth.15 

111. Laborand Capital ......20 

112. Wanda by Onlda, Part I. ..Jtt 

Wanda, by Ouida, Fartu 1A 


THE 


FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS.’-^ 


FITZ-BOODLE’S CONFESSIONS 


PREFACE. 

GRORGE FITZ-BOODLE, ESQUIRE, 'iO OLIVER YORKE, ESQUIRE. 

Omnium Club, May 20, 1842. 

Dear Sir, — I have always been considered the third-best 
whist-player in Europe, and (though never betting more than 
five pounds) have for many years past added considerably to 
my yearly income by my skill in the game, until the commence- 
ment of the present season, when a French gentleman. Mon- 
sieur Lalouette, was admitted to the club where I usually play. 
His »skill and reputation were so great, that no men of the club 
were inclined to play against us two of a side ; and the con- 
sequence has been, that we have been in a manner pitted 
against one another. By a strange turn of luck (for I cannot 
admit the idea of his superiority). Fortune, since the French- 
man’s arrival, has been almost constantly against me, and 1 
have lost two-and-thirty nights in the course of a couple of 
score of nights’ play. 

Everybody knows that I am a poor man ; and so much 
has Lalouette’s luck drained my finances, that only last week 
I was obliged to give him that famous gray cob which you have 
seen me riding in the Park (I can’t afford a thorough-bred, and 

•■The “ Fitz-Boodlc Papers ” first appeared in Fraser^ s Magazine for the year 1842. 

(537) 


THE F2TZ-BOODLE PA TEES. 


540 

for the same reason. Say what they will, ladies do not like you 
to smoke in their bedrooms ; their silly little noses scent out 
the odor upon the chintz, weeks after you have left them. Sir 
John has been caught coming to bed particularly merry and 
redolent of cigar smoke ; young George, from Eaton, was 
absolutely found in the little green-house puffing an Havana; 
and when discovered, they both lay the blame upon Fitz-Boodle. 
“ It was Mr. Fitz-Boodle, mamma,” says George, ‘‘ who offered 
me the cigar, and I did not like to refuse him.” “ That rascal 
Fitz seduced us, my dear,” said Sir John, ‘‘and kept us laugh 
ing until past midnight.” Her ladyship instantly sets me down 
as a person to be avoided. “ George,” whispers she to her 
boy, ‘‘ promise me, on your honor, when you go to town, not 
to know that man.” And when she enters the breakfast- room 
for prayers, the first greeting is a peculiar expression of coun- 
tenance, and inhaling of breath, by which my lady indicates 
the presence of some exceedingly disagreeable odor in the room. 
She makes you the faintest of curtseys, and regards you, if not 
with a “ flashing eye,” as in the novels, at least with a “ distend- 
ed nostril.” During the whole of the service, her heart is filled 
with the blackest gall towards you ; and she is thinking about 
the best means of getting you out of the house. 

What is this smoking that it should be considered a crime ? 
I believe in my heart that women are jealous of it, as of a rival. 
They speak of it as of some secret, awful vice that seizes upon 
a man, and makes him a pariah from genteel society. I would 
lay a guinea that many a lady who has just been kind enough 
to read the above lines lays down the book, after this confession 
of mine that I am a smoker, and says, “ Oh, the vulgar wretch ! ” 
and passes on to something else. 

The fact is, that the cigar is a rival to the ladies, and 
their conqueror too. In the chief pipe-smoking nations they 
are kept in subjection. While the chief. Little White Belt, 
smokes, the women are silent in his wigwam ; while Mahomet 
Ben Jawbrahim causes volumes of odorous incense of Latakia 
to play round his beard, the women of the harem do not dis- 
turb his meditations, but only add to the delight of them by 
tinkling on a dulcimer and dancing before him. When Pro- 
fessor Strumpff of Gottingen takes down No. 13 from the wall, 
with a picture of Beatrice Cenci upon it, and which holds a 
pound of canaster, the frau Professorin knows that for two 
hours Hermann is engaged, and takes up her stockings and 
knits in quiet. The constitution of French society has been 
quite changed within the last twelve years : an ancient and 


FITZ-BOODLE'S CONFESSIONS, 


541 


respectable dynasty has been overthrown ; an aristocracy which 
Napoleon could never master has disappeared : and from what 
cause ? I do not hesitate to say, — -fro77i the habit of S77ioking. 
Ask any man whether, five years before the revolution of July, 
if you wanted a cigar at Paris, they did not bring you a roll of 
tobacco with a straw in it? Now, the whole city smokes; 
society is changed ; and be sure of this, ladies, a similar com- 
bat is going on in this country at present between cigar-smoking 
and you. Do you suppose you will conquer ? Look over the 
wide world, and see that your adversary has overcome it. 
Germany has been puffing for threescore years ; France smokes 
to a man. Do you think you can keep the enemy out of Eng- 
land ? Psha ! look at his progress. Ask the club-houses, 
Kave they smoking-rooms, or not ? Are they not obliged to 
yield to the general want of the age, in spite of the resistance 
of the old women on the committees ? I, for my part, do not 
despair to see a bishop lolling out of the Athenaeum ” with .a 
cheroot in his mouth, or, at any rate, a pipe stuck in his shovel- 
hatr 

Put as in all great causes and in promulgating new and 
illustrious theories, their first propounders and exponents are 
generally the victims of their enthusiasm, of course the first 
preachers of smoking have been martyrs, too ; and George 
Fitz-Boodle is one. The first gas-man was ruined ; the in- 
ventor of steam-engine printing became a pauper. I began to 
smoke in days when the task was one of some danger, and paid 
the penalty of my crime. I was fiogged most fiercely for my 
first cigar; for, being asked to dine one Sunday evening with a 
half-pay colonel of dragoons (the gallant, simple, humorous 
Shortcut — lieaven bless him ! — I have had many a guinea from 
him who had so few), he insisted upon my smoking in his room 
at the “ Salopian,” and the consequence was, that I became so 
violently ill as to be reported intoxicated upon my return to 
Slaughter-House School, where I was a boarder, and I was 
whipped the next morning for my peccadillo. At Christ 
Church, one of our tutors was the celebrated lamented Otto 
Rose, who would have been a bishop under the present Gov- 
ernment, had not an immoderate indulgence in water-gruel 
cut short his elegant and useful career. He was a good man, 
a pretty scholar and poet (the episode upon the discovery of 
eau-de-Cologne, in his prize-poem on ‘‘ The Rhine,” was con- 
sidered a masterpiece of art, though I am not much of judge 
myself upon such matters), and he was as remarkable for his 
fondness for a tuft as for his nervous antipathy to tobaccG. As 


542 


THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS, 


ill-luck would have it, my rooms (in Tom Quad) were exactly 
under his ; and I was grown by this time to be a confirmed 
smoker. I was a baronet’s son (we are of James the First’s 
creation), and I do believe our j;utor could have pardoned any 
crime in the world but this. He had seen me in atandenij and 
at that moment was seized with a \fiolent fit of sneezing — 
(sternutatory paroxysm he called it) — at the conclusion of 
which I was a mile down the Woodstock Road. He had seen 
me in pink, as we used to call it, swaggering in the open sun- 
shine across a grass-plot in the court ; but spied out oppor- 
tunely a servitor, one Todhunter by name, who was going to 
iTiorning chapel with his shoestring untied, and forthwith 
sprung towards that unfortunate person, to set him an imposi- 
tion. Everything, in fact, but tobacco he could forgive. Why 
did cursed fortune bring him into the rooms over mine ? The 
odor of the cigars made his gentle spirit quite furious ; and one 
luckless morning, when I was standing before my “ oak,” and 
chanced to puff a great houffk of Varinas into his face, he for- 
got his respect for my family altogether (I was the second son, 
and my brother a sickly creature thc?i ^ — he is now sixteen stone 
in weight, and has a half-score of children) ; gave me a severe 
lecture, to which I replied rather hotly, -as was my wont. And 
then came demand for an apology ; refusal on my part ; appeal 
to the dean ; convocation ; and rustication of George Savage 
Fitz-Boodle. 

My father had taken a second wife (of the noble house of 
Flintskinner), and Lady Fitz-Boodle detested smoking, as a wo- 
man of her high principles should. She had an entire mastery 
over the worthy old gentleman, and thought I was a sort of 
demon of wickedness. The old man went down to his grave 
with some similar notion, — heaven help him ! and left me but 
the wretched twelve thousand pounds secured to me on my 
poor mother’s property. 

In the army, my luck was much the same. I joined the 

th Lancers, Lieut.-Col. Lord Martingale, in the year 1817. 

I only did duty with the regiment for three months. We were 
quartered at Cork, where I found the Irish doodheen and 
tobacco the pleasantest smoking possible ; and was found by 
his lordship, one day upon stable duty, smoking the shortest, 
dearest little dumpy clay-pipe in the world. 

“ Cornet Fitz-Boodle,” said my lord, in a towering passion, 
from what blackguard did you get that pipe ? ” 

I omit the oaths which garnished invariably his lordship’s 
conversation. 


FITZ-BOODLE'S CONFESSIONS. 


543 


•*I got it, my lord,” said I, “from one Terence Mullins, a 
jingle-driver, with a packet of his peculiar tobacco. You some- 
times smoke Turkish, I believe ; do try this. Isn’t it good ? ” 
And in the simplest way in the world I puffed a volume into his 
face. “I see you like it,” said Iso coolly, that the men — and 1 
do believe the horses — burst out laughing. 

He started back — choking almost, and recovered himself 
only to vent such a storm of oaths and curses that I was com- 
pelled to request Capt. Rawdon (the captain on duty) to take 
note of his lordship’s words ; and unluckily could not help 
adding a question which settled my business. You were good 
enough,” I said, “ to ask me, my lord, from what blackguard I 
got my pipe ; might I ask from what blackguard you learned 
your language ” 

This was quite enough. Had I said, “ From what gentle^nan 
did your lordship learn your language 'i ” the point would have 
been quite as good, and my Lord Martingale would have suf- 
fered in my place : as it was, I was so strongly recommended 
to sell out by his Royal Highness the Commander-in-Chief, 
.that, being of a good-natured disposition, never knowing how 
to refuse a friend, I at once threw up my hopes of military 
distinction and retired into civil life. 

My lord was kind enough to meet me afterwards in a field 
in the Glanmire Road, where he put a ball into my leg. This 
I returned to him some years later with about twenty-three 
others — black ones — when he came to be balloted for at a 
club of which I have the honor to be a member. 

Thus by the indulgence of a simple and harmless propen- 
sity, — of a propensity which can inflict an injury upon no 
person or thing except the coat and the person of him who in- 
dulges in it, — of a custom honored and observed in almost all 
the nations of the world, — of a custom which, far from leading 
a man into any wickedness or dissipation to which youth is 
subject, on the contrary, begets only benevolent silence and 
thoughtful good-humored observation — I found at the age of 
twenty all my prospects in life destroyed. I cared not for 
woman in those days : the calm smoker lias a sweet companion 
\n his pipe. I did not drink immoderately of wine ; for though 
a friend to trifling potations, to excessively strong drinks 
tobacco is abhorrent. I never thought of gambling, for the 
lover of the pipe has no need of such excitement ; but I was 
considered a monster of dissipation in my family, and bade fair 
to come to ruin. 

Look at George,^ my mother-in-law said to the genteel 


544 


THE FirZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


and correct young Flintskinners. ‘‘ He entered the world with 
every prospect in life, and see in what an abyss of degradation 
his fatal habits liave plunged him ! At school he was flogged 
and disgraced, he was disgraced and rusticated at the university, 
he was disgraced and expelled from the army ! He might have 
had the living of Boodle (her ladyship gave it to one of lier 
nephews), “ but he would not take his degree : his papa would 
have purchased him a troop — nay, a lieutenant-colonelcy some 
day, but for his fatal excesses. And now as long as my dear 
husband will listen to the voice of a wife who adores him — 
never, never shall he spend a shilling upon so worthless a young 
man. He has a small income from his mother (I cannot but 
think that the first Lady Fitz-Boodle was a weak and misguided 
person) ; let him live upon his mean pittance as he can, and I 
heartily pray we may not hear of him in jail ! ” 

My brother, after he came to the estate, married the ninth 
daughter of our neighbor. Sir John Spreadeagle ; and Boodle 
Hall has seen a new little Fitz-boodle with every succeeding 
spring. The dowager retired to Scotland with a large jointure 
and a wondrous heap of savings. Lady Fitz is a good creature, 
but she thinks me something diabolical, trembles when she 
sees me, and gathers all her children about her, rushes into the 
nursery whenever I pay that little seminary a visit, and actually 
slapped poor little Frank’s ears one day when I was teaching 
him to ride upon the back of a Newfoundland dog. 

George,” said my brother to me the last time I paid him 
a visit at the old hall, don’t be angry, my dear fellow, but 
Maria is in a — hum — in a delicate situation, expecting her — 
hum ” — (the eleventh) — ‘‘ and do you know you frighten her 1 
It was but yesterday you met her in the rookery — you were 
smoking that enormous German pipe — and when she came in 
she had an hysterical seizure, and Drench says that in her situ- 
ation it's dangerous. And I say, George, if you go to town 
you’ll find a couple of hundred at your banker’s.” And with 
this the poor fellow shook me by the hand, and called for a 
fresh bottle of claret. 

Afterwards he told me, with many hesitations, that my room 
at Boodle Hall had been made into a second nursery. I see 
my sister-in-law in London twice or thrice in the season, and 
the little people, who have almost forgotten to call me uncle 
George. 

It’s hard, too, for I am a lonely man after all, and my heart 
yearns to them. The other day I smuggled a couple of them 
into my chambers, and had a little feast of cream and straw- 


F!tz-boodle\s confessions. 


545 


berries to welcome them. But it had like to have cost the 
nursery-maid (a Swiss girl that Fitz-Boodle hired somewhere in 
his travels) her place. My step-mamma, who happened to be 
in town, came dying down in her chariot, pounced upon the 
poor thing and the children in the midst of the entertainment ; 
and when 1 asked her, with rather a bad grace to be sure, to 
take a chair and a share of the feast — 

Mr. Fitz-Boodle, ' said she, “I am not accustomed to sit 
down in a place that smells of tobacco like an ale-house — an 
ale-house inhabited by a serpent, sir ! A serpent / — do you under- 
stand me ? — who carries his poison into his brother’s own house, 
and purshues his eenfamous designs before his brother’s own 
children. Put on Miss Maria’s bonnet this instant. Mamsell, 
ontondy-voo ? Metty le bo7i7iy a mamsell. And I shall take 
care, Mamsell, that you return to Switzerland to-morrow. I’ve 
no doubt you are a relation of Courvoisier — oiii ! oui I Cour~ 
voisier, vans co7npre?iny — and you shall certainly be sent back to 
your friends.” 

With this speech, and with the children and their maid sob- 
bing before her, my lady retired ; but for once my sister-in-law 
was on my side, not liking the meddlement of the elder lady. 

I know, then, that from indulging in that simple habit of 
smoking, I have gained among the ladies a dreadful reputation. 
I see that they look coolly upon me, and darkly at their hus- 
bands when they arrive at home in my company. Men, I ob- 
serve, in consequence, ask me to dine much oftener at the 
club, or the “ Star and Garter ” at Richmond, or at Love- 
grove’s,” than in their own houses ; and with this sort of ar- 
rangement I am fain to acquiesce ; for, as I said before, I am 
of an easy temper, and can at any rate take my cigar-case out 
after dinner at Blackwall, when my lady or the duchess is not 
by. I know, of course, the best men in town ; and as for 
ladies’ society, not having it (for I will have none of your 
pseudo-ladies, such as sometimes honor bachelors’ parties, — 
actresses, couturieres, opera-dancers, and so forth) — as for 
ladies’ society, 1 say, I cry pish ! ’tis not worth the trouble of 
the complimenting, and the bother of pumps and black silk 
stockings. 

Let any man remember what ladies’ society was when he 
had an opportunity of seeing them among themselves, as What- 
d’ 3 ^e-cairim does in the Thesmophoria — (I beg pardon, I was 
on the verge of a classical allusion, which I abominate) — I 
mean at that period of his life when the intellect is pretty acute, 
though the body is small — namely, when a young gentleman is 


THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


546 

about eleven years of age, dining at his father’s table during 
the lioliclays, and is requested by his papa to quit the dinner 
table when the ladies retire from it. 

Co?^hl£H ! I recollect their whole talk as well as if it had 
been whispered but yesterday ; and can see, after a long din- 
ner, the yellow summer sun throwing long shadows over the 
lawn before the dining-room windows, and my poor mother and 
her company of ladies sailing away to the music-room in old 
Boodle Hall. . The Countess Dawdley was the great lady in 
our county, a portly lady who used to love crimson satin in 
those days, and birds of paradise. She was flaxen-haired, and 
the Regent once said she resembled one of King Charles’s 
beauties. 

When Sir John Todcaster used to begin his famous story 
of the exciseman (I shall not tell it here, for very good reasons), 
my poor mother used to turn to Lady Dawdley, and give that 
mvstic sio:nal at which all females rise from their chairs. HkifP 
hunt, the curate, would spring from his seat, and be sure to be 
the first to open the door for the retreating ladies ; and my 
brother Tom and I, though remaining stoutly in our places, 
were speedily ejected from them by the governor’s invariable 
remark, ‘‘ Tom and George, if you have had quite enough of 
wine, you had better go and join your mamma.” Yonder she 
marches, heaven bless her ! through the old oak hall (how long 
the shadows of the antlers are on the wainscot, and the armor 
of Rollo Fitzboodle looks in the sunset as if it were emblazoned 
with rubies) — yonder she marches, stately and tall, in her in- 
variable pearl-colored tabinet, followed by Lady Dawdley, 
blazing like a flamingo ; next comes Lady Emily Tufthunt (she 
was Lady Emily Elintskinner), who will not for all the world 
take precedence of rich, vulgar, kind, good-humored Mrs. Col- 
07 iel Grogwater, as she would be called, with a yellow little 
husband from Madras, who first taught me to drink sangaree. 
He was a new arrival in our county, but paid nobly to the 
hounds, and occupied hospitably a house which was always 
famous for its hospitality — Sievely Hall (poor Bob Cullender 
ran through seven thousand a year before he was thirty years 
old). Once when I was a lad. Colonel Grogwater gave me two 
gold mohurs out of his desk for whist-markers, and I’m sorry to 
say I ran up from Eton and sold them both for seven t}^- three 
shillings at a shop in Cornhill. But to return to the ladies, 
who are all this while kept waiting in the hall, and to their 
usual conversation after dinner. 

Can any man forget how miserably flat it was ? Five 
matrons sit on sofas, and talk in a subdued voice : — 


FITZ-BOODLE'S CONFESSIONS. 


547 

First Lady {mysterio7isly). — My clear Lady Dawdley, do 
tell me about poor Susan Tuckett/^ 

Second Lady, — “ All three children are perfectly well, and 1 
assure you as fine babies as 1 ever saw in my life. I made her 
give them Daffey’s Elixir the first day ; and it was the greatest 
mercy that 1 had some of Frederick’s baby-clothes by me ; for 
you know I had provided Susan with sets for one only, and 
really ” 

Third Lady, — “ Of course one couldn’t ; and for my part I 
think your ladyship is a great deal too kind to these people. 
A litile gardener’s boy dressed in Lord Dawdley’s frocks indeed ! 
I recollect that one at his christening had the sweetest lace in 
the world ! ” 

Fonrth Lady, — What do you think of this, ma’am — Lady 
Eniil}^, I mean } 1 have just had it from Howell and James -: 

— guipure, they call it. Isn’t it an odd name for lace ? And 
they charge me, upon my conscience, four guineas a yard ! ” 

Third Lady. — “ My mother, when she came to Flintskinner, 
had lace upon her robe that cost sixty guineas a yard, ma’am ! 
’Twas sent from Malines direct by our relation, the Count 
d’Araigiiay.” 

Foui'th Lady {aside'). I, thought she would not let the 
evening pass without talking of her Malines lace and her Count 
d’Araignay. Odious people ! they don’t spare their backs, but 
they pinch their ” 

Here Tom upsets a coffee-cup over his white jean trousers, 
and another young gentlemen bursts into a laugh, saying, ‘‘ By 
Jove, that’s a good ’un ! ” 

“ George, my dear,” says mamma, ‘‘ had not you and your 
young friend better go into the garden ? But mind, no fruit, 
or Dr. Glauber must be called in again immediately ! ” And 
we all go, and in ten minutes I and my brother are fighting in 
the stables. 

If, instead of listening to the matrons and their discourse, 
we had taken the opportunity of attending to the conversation 
of the Misses, we should have heard matter not a whit more 
interesting. 

First Miss.— ^ They were all three in blue crape ; you never 
saw anything so odious. And I know for a certainty that they 
wore those dresses at Muddlebury, at the archery-ball, and I 
dare say they had them in town.” 

Second .Miss. — “ Don’t you think Jemima decidedly crooked } 
And those fair complexions they freckle so, that really Miss 
Blanche ought to be called Miss Brown.*’ 


548 


THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


Third Mlss.—‘‘ He, he, he ! 

Fourth Afiss. — ‘‘Don’t you think Blanche is a pretty 
name ? ” 

First Miss. — “ La ! do you think so, dear ? Why it’s my 
second name ! ” 

Second A/iss. — “ Then I’m sure Captain Travers thinks it a 
beautiful name ! ” 

third Afiss.—^‘ He, he, he ! ” 

Fourth Aliss. — “ What was he telling you at dinner that 
seemed to interest you so ? ” 

First Aliss. — “ O law, nothing ! — that is, yes ! Charles — 
that is, — Captain Travers, is a sweet poet, and was reciting to 
me some lines that he had composed upon a faded violet : 

“ • The odor from the flower is gone, 

That like thy ’ 

like thy something, I forget what it was ; but his lines are 
sweet, and so original too ! I wish that horrid Sir John 'Pod- 
caster had not begun his story of the exciseman. For Lady 
Fitz-Boodle always quits the table when he begins.” 

Third Miss. — “ Do you like those tufts that gentlemen 
wear sometimes on their chins } ”• 

Second Miss. — “ Nonsense, Mary ! ” 

Third Miss. — “Well, I only asked, Jane. Frank thinks, 
you know, that lie shall very soon have one, and puts bear’s- 
grease on his chin every night.” 

Second Miss. — “ Mary, nonsense ! ” 

Third Miss. — “ Well, only ask him. You know he came to 
our dressing-room last night and took the pomatum away ; and 
he says that when boys go to Oxford they always ” 

First Miss. — “ O heavens ! have you heard the news about 
the Lancers ? Charles — that is, Captain Travers, told it me ! ” 

Second Miss. — “ Law ! they won’t go away before the ball, 
I hope ! ” 

First Miss. — “ No, but on the 15 th they are to shave their 
mustaches ! He says that Lord Tufto is in a perfect fury 
about it ! ” 

Second Miss. — “ And poor George Beardmore, too ! ” &c. 

Here Tom upsets the coffee over his trousers, and the con- 
versations end. I can recollect a dozen such, and ask any 
man of sense whether such talk amuses him ? 

Try again to speak to a young lady while you are dancing 
’ — what we call in this country — a quadrille. What nonsense 
(1 q you in'rariablv ri\c and receive in return! .No, 1 am a 


rr TZ- -Is OODLE'S COxVFESSIONS. 


549 


woman-scorner, and don’t care to own it. I hate young ladies I 
Have 1 not been in love witli several, and has any one of them 
ever treated me decently.^ I hate married women ! Do they 
not hate me ? and, simply because J smoke, try to draw their 
husbands away from my society? 1 hate dowagers ! Have I 
not cause ? Does not every dowager in London point to George 
Fitz-Boodle as to a dissolute wretch whom young and old should 
avoid ? 

And yet do not imagine that I have not loved. I have, and 
madly, many, many times ! I am but eight-and-thirty,* not 
past the age of passion, and may very likely end by running ofi: 
with an heiress — or a cook-maid (for who knows what strange 
freaks Love may choose to play in his own particular person ? 
and I hold a man to be a mean creature who calculates about 
checking any such sacred impulse as lawful love) — I say, though 
despising the sex in general for their conduct to me, I know of 
particular persons belonging to it who are worthy of all respect 
and esteem, and as such I beg leave to point out the particular 
young lady who is perusing these lines. Do not, dear madam, 
then imagine that if I knew you I should be disposed to sneer 
at you. Ah, no ! Fitz-Booclle’s bosom has tenderer sentiments 
than from his way of life you would fancy, and stern by rule is 
only too soft by practice. Shall I whisper to you tlie story of 
one or two of my attachments ? All terminating fatally (not 
in death, but in disappointment, which, as it occurred, 1 u?ed 
to imagine a thousand times more bitter than death, but from 
which one recovers somehow more readily than from the other- 
named complaint) — all, I say, terminating wretchedly to myself, 
as if some fatality pursued my desire to become a domestic 
character. 

My first love — no, let us pass that over. Sweet one ! thy 
name shall profane no hireling page. Sweet, sweet memory ! 
Ah, ladies, those delicate hearts of yours have, too, felt the 
throb. And between the last ob in the word throb and the words 
now written, I have passed a delicious period of perhaps an 
hour, perhaps a minute, I know not how long, thinking of that 
holy first love and of her who inspired it. How clearly every 
single incident of the passion is remembered h\ me I and yet 
’twas long, long since. I was but a child then — a child at 
school — and, if the truth must be told, L — ra R-ggl-s (I would 
not write her whole name to be made, one of the Marquess of 
Hertford’s executors) was a woman full thirteen years older 
than myself ; at the period of which 1 write she must !:avebecii 

* is rivo-.i:K:-forty, if he is a flay old. — O. V. 


550 


THE FITZ-BCODLE TAPERS. 


at least live-and-tweniy. She and her mother used to sell tarts, 
hard-bake, lollipops, and other such simple comestibles, on 
Wednesdays and Saturdays (^half-holidays), at a private school 
where I received the first rudiments of a classical education. 
I used to go and sit before her tray for hours, but I do not 
think the poor girl ever supposed any motive led me so con* 
stantly to her little stall beyond a vulgar longing for her tarts 
and her ginger-beer. Yes, even at that early period my actions 
were misrepresented, and the fatality which has oppressed my 
whole life began to show itself, — the purest passion was inisin^ 
terpreted by her and my school-fellows, and they thought I was 
actuated by simple gluttony. They nicknamed me Alicom- 
payne. 

Well, be it so. Laugh at early passion ye who will ; a high- 
born boy madly in love with a lowly ginger-beer girl ! She 
married afterwards, took the name of Latter, and now keeps 
v/ith her old husband a turnpike, through which 1 often ride ; 
but I can recollect liCr bright and rosy of a sunny summer after- 
noon, her red cheeks shaded by a battered straw bonnet, her 
tarts and ginger-beer upon a neat white cloth before her, mend- 
ing blue worsted stockings until the young gentlemen should 
interrupt her by coming to buy. 

Many persons will call this description low ; I do not envy 
them their gentility* and have always observed through life (as, 
to be sure, every other genileniafi has observed as well as my- 
self) that it is your parvenu who stickles most for what he calls 
the genteel, and has the most squeamish abhorrence for what 
is frank and natural. Let us pass at once, however, as all the 
world must be pleased, to a recital of an affair which occurred 
in the very best circles of society, as they are called, viz : my 
next unfortunate attachment. 

It did not occur for several years after that simple and pla- 
tonic passion just described : for though they may talk of youth 
as the season of romance, it has always appeared to me that 
there are no beings in the world so entirely unromantic and seli- 
i ;h as certain young English gentlemen from the age of fifteen 
to twent}'. I'lic oldest Lovelace about town is scarcely more 
hard-hearted and scornful than they ; they ape all sons of self- 
ishness and rouerie : they aim at excelling at cricket, at billiards, 
at rowing, at drinking, and set more store by a red coat and a 
neat pair of top-boots than by any other glory. A young fellow 
staggers into college-chapel of a morning, and communicates to 
all his friends that he was so cut last night,'’ with the greatest 
possible pride. He makes a joke sisters and a {d». 


FJ FZ~/J OODLh 'S CChVFE'SS/OFTS. 


55 ^ 


mother at home who loves him ; and if he speaks of his father, 
it is with a knowing sneer to say that lie has a tailor’s and a 
horse-dealer’s bill that will surprise “the old governor.” He 
would be ashamed of being in love. I, in common with my 
kind, had these affectations, and my perpetual custom of smok- 
ing added not a little to my reputation as an accomplished ro 7 ie. 
What came of this custom in the army and at college, the reader 
has already heard. Alas! in life it went no better with me, 
and many pretty chances I had went off in that accursed smoke. 

After quitting the army in the abrupt manner stated, I 
passed some short time at home, and was tolerated by my 
mother-in-law, because I had formed an attachment to a young 
lady of good connections and with a considerable fortune, which 
was really very nearly becoming mine. Mary MkAllster was 
the only daughter of Colonel MCVlister, late of the Blues, and 
Lady Susan his wife. Her ladyship was no more; and, indeed, 
of no family compared to ours (which has refused a peerage 
any tim6 these two hundred years) ; but being an earl’s daughter 
and a Scotchwoman, Lady Emily Fitz-Boodle did not fail to 
consider her highly. I.ady Susan was daughter of the late Ad- 
miral Earl of Marlingspike and Baron Plumduff. llie Colonel, 
Miss MkVlister’s father, had a good estate, of which his daughter 
was the heiress, and as I fished her out of the water upon a 
pleasure-party, and swam with her to shore, we became natu- 
ally intimate, and Colonel MkMister foj-got, on account of the 
service rendered to him, the dreadful reputation for profligacy 
which I enjoyed in the county. 

Well, to cut a long story short, which is told here merely 
for the moral at the end of it, I should have been Fitz-Boodle 
McAlister at this minute most probably, and master of four 
tht)usand a year, but for the fatal cigar-box. I bear Mary 
malice in saying that she was a high-spirited little girl, loving, 
before all things, her own way ’; na}", perhaps I do not, from 
long habit and indulgence in tobacco-smoking, appreciate the 
delicacy of female organizations, which were oftentimes most 
painfully affected by it. She was a keen-sighted little person, 
and soon found that the world had belied poor George Fitz- 
Boodle ; who, instead of being the cunning monster people sup- 
posed him to be, was a simple, reckless, good-humored, honest 
fellow, marvellously addicted to smoking, idleness, and telling 
the truth. She called me Orson, and I was happy enough on 
the 14th February, in the year 18 — (it's of no consequence), to 
send her such a pretty little copy of verses about Orson and 
Valentine, in which the rude habits of the savage man were 


55 ’ 


TffK FITZ^BOODLE I^APERS, 


shown to be overcome by the polished graces of his kind and 
brilliant conqueror, that she was fairly overcome, and said to 
me, ‘‘ George Fitz-Boodle, if you give up smoking for a year I 
will marry you.” 

I swore I would, of course, and went home and flung four 
pounds of Hudson’s cigars, two meerschaum pipes that had 
cost me ten guineas at the establishment of Mr. Gattie at Ox- 
ford, a tobacco-bag that Lady Fitz-Boodle had given me before 
her marriage with my father (it was the only present that I ever 
had from her or any member of the Flintskinner family), and 
some choice packets of Varinas and Syrian, into the lake in 
Boodle Park. The weapon amongst them all which I most re- 
gretted was — will it be believed ? — the little black doodheen 
which had been the cause of the quarrel between Lord Martin- 
gale and me. However, it went along with the others. I 
would not allow my groom to have so much as a cigar, lest I 
should be tempted hereafter ; and the consequence was that a 
few days after many fat carps and tenches in the lake (I must 
confess ’twas no bigger than a pond) nibbled at the tobacco, 
and came floating on their backs on the top of the water quite 
intoxicated. My conversion made some noise in the county, 
being emphasized as it were by this fact of the fish. 1 can’t 
tell you with what pangs I kept my resolution ; but keep it I 
did for some time. 

With so much beauty and wealth, Mary M‘Alister had of 
course many suitors, and among them was the young Lord 
Dawdley, whose mamma has previously been described in her 
gown of red satin. As I used to thrash Dawdley at school, I 
thrashed him in after-life in love ; he put up widi his disappoint- 
ment pretty well, and came after a while and shook hands with 
me, telling me of the bets that there were in the county, wliere 
the whole story was known, for and against me. For the fact 
is, as I must own, that Mary McAlister, the queerest, frankest 
of women, made no secret of the agreement, or the cause of it, 

‘‘I did not care a penny for Orson,” she said, “but he 
would go on writing me such dear pretty verses that at last I 
couldn’t help saying yes. But if he breaks his promise to me, 
I declare, upon my honor, I’ll break mine, and nobody’s heart 
will be broken either.” 

This was the perfect fact, as I must confess, and I declare 
that it was only because she amused me and delighted me, and 
provoked me, and made nu laugh very much, and because, no 
doubt, she was very rich, that I liad any attachment for her. 

“ For heaven’s sake, George,” my father sai l to me, qs V 


Frrz-BOODLE'S CONFESSIONS. 


553 


quitted home to follow my beloved to London, remember that 
you are a younger brother and have a lovely girl and four 
thousand a year within a year’s reach of you. Smoke as much 
as you like, my boy, after marriage,” added the old gentleman, 
knowingly (as if he., honest soul, after his second marriage, 
dared drink an extra pint of wine without my lady’s permis- 
sion !) ‘‘‘but eschew the tobacco-shops till then.” 

I went to London resolving to act upon the paternal advice, 
and oh ! how I longed for the day when I should be married, 
vowing in my secret soul that I would light a cigar as I walked 
out of St. George’s, Hanover Square. 

Well, I came to London, and so carefully avoided smoking 
that I would not even go into Hudson’s shop to pay his bill, 
and as smoking was not the fashion then among young men as 
(thank heaven !) it is now, I had not many temptations from my 
friends’ examples in my clubs or elsewhere ; only little Dawdley 
began to smoke, as if to spite me. He had never done so 
before, but confessed — the rascal ! — that he enjoyed a cigar 
now, if it were but to mortify me. But I took to other and more 
dangerous excitements, and upon the nights when not in attend- 
ance upon Mary M‘Alister, might be found in very dangerous 
proximity to a polished mahogany table, round which claret 
bottles circulated a great deal too often, or worse still, to a 
table covered with green cloth and ornamented with a couple 
of wax-candles and a couple of packs of cards, and four gentle- 
men playing the enticing game of whist. Likewise, I came to 
carry a snuh-box, and to consume in secret huge quantities of 
rappee. 

For ladies’ society I was even then disinclined, hating and 
despising small talk, and dancing, and hot routs, and \adgar 
scrambles for suppers. I never could understand the pleasure 
of acting the part of lackey to a dowager, and standing behind 
her chair, or bustling through the crowd for her carriage. I 
always found an opera too long by two acts, and have repeatedly 
fallen asleep in the presence of Mary M‘Alister herself, sitting 
at the back of the box shaded by the huge beret of her old 
aunt. Lady Betty Plumduff ; and many a time has Dawdley, 
with Miss M‘Alister on his arm, wakened me up at the close of 
the entertainment in time to offer my hand to Lady Betty and 
lead the ladies to their carriage. If I attended her occasionally* 
to any ball or party of pleasure, I went, it must be confessed, 
with clumsy, ill- disguised, ill-humor. Good heavens ! have I 
often and often thought in the midst of a song, or tl:e ver\^ thick 
of a ball-room, can people prefer this to a book and a sofa, and 


554 


THE FI'rZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


a ilcar, clear cigar-box, from tliy stores, C) cliarmiag Mariana 
Wooclvillc ! Deprived of iny favorite plant, I grew sick in 
mind and body, mocKly, sarcastic, and discontented. 

Such a state of llung.s could not long continue, nor could 
Miss M'Alister continue to have much attachment for such a 
sullen, ill-condiiioned creature as 1 then was. She used to 
make me wild with her wit and her sarcasm, nor have I ever 
possessed the readiness to parry or reply to those hue points of 
woman’s wit, and she treated me the more mercilessly as she 
saw that I could not resist her. 

Well, the polite reader must remember a great fete that was 
given at B Mouse, some years back, in honor of his High- 

ness the Hereditary Prince of Kalbsbraten-Puinpernickel, who 
was then in London on a visit to his illustrious relatives. It 
was a fancy ball, and the poems of Scott being at that time all 
the fashion, Mary was to aj^pear in the character of the “ Lady 
of the Lake,*’ old M'Alister making a \’erv tall and severe- 
looking harper; Dawdley, a most insignificant Pitziaines ; and 
}'our humble servant a stalwart manly Roderick Dim. W'e 

were to meet at B House at twelve o’clock, and as I had 

no fancy to drive through the town in my cab dressed in a kilt 
and philibeg, I agreed to take a seat in Dawdley \s carriage, and 
to dress at his house in May PMir. At eleven 1 left a very 
pleasant bachelor’s party, growling to quit them and the honest, 
jovial claret-bottle, in order to scrape and cut capers like a 
harlequin from the theatre. When I arrived at Dawdley’s, 1 
mounted to a dressing-room, and began to array myself in my 
cursed costume. 

4'he art of costuming was by no means so well understood 
in those days as it has been since, and mine was out of all cor- 
rectness. I was made to sport an enormous plume of black 
ostrich-feathers, such as never was worn by any Highland chief, 
and had a huge tiger-skin sporran to dangle like an apron be- 
fore innumerable' yards of plaid petticoat. The tartan cloak 
was outrageously hot and voluminous ; it was the dog-days, and 
all these things I was condemned to wear in the midst of a 
thousand people ! 

Dawdley sent up word, as I was dressing, that his dress liad 
not arrived, and he took my cab and drove off in a rage to his 
tailor. 

There was no hurry, I thought, to make a fool of myself ; Svj 
having put on a pair of plaid trews, and very neat pumps witli 
shce-buckles, my courage failed me as to the rest of the dress, 
an I takiipg down one of his dressing-gowns. I went down stairs 
to the stnrlv. to wait until l:e :trri'.e. 


555 


FrTZ-BOODLE'S CONFESSIO.W : 

The windows of the pretty room were open, and a snug 
sofa, with innumerable cushions, drawn towards one of them. A 
great tranquil moon was staring into the chamber, in which 
stood, amidst books and all sorts of bachelor’s lumber, a silver 
tray with a couple of tall Venice glasses, and a. bottle of Ma- 
raschino bound with straw\ I can see now the twinkle of the 
liquor in the moonshine, as I poured it into the glass ; and I swal- 
lowed two or three little cups of it, for my spirits were downcast. 
Close to the tray of Maraschino stood — must I say it ? — a box, 
a mere box of cedar, bound rudely together with pink paper 
branded with the name of ‘‘ Hudson on the side, and bearing 
on the cover the arms of Spain. I thought I would just take 
up the box and look in it. 

y\h heaven ! there they were — a hundred and fifty of them, 
in calm, comfortable rows : lovingly side by side they lay, with 
thiC great moon sliining down upon them — thin at the tip, full 
at the waist, elegantly round and full, a little spot here and 
there shining upon them — beauty spots upon the cheek of 
Sylvia. The house was quite quiet. Dawdley always smoked 
in his room ; — I hqd not smoked for four months and eleven 
days. 

# * * * 

When Lord Daw^dley came into the study, he did not make 
any remarks ; and oh, ho\v easy my heart felt ! He was dressed 
in his green boots, after Westall’s picture, correctly. 

‘‘It’s time to be off, George,” said he ; “they told me 3'Ou 
were dressed long ago. Come up, my man, and get ready.” 

I rushed up into the dressing-room, and madly dashed m.y 
head and arms into a pool of eau-de-Cologne. I drank, I be- 
lieve, a tumblerful of it. I called for my clothes, and, strange 
to say, they were gone. My servant brought them to me, how- 
ever, saying that he had put them away — making some stupid 
excuse. I put them on, not heeding them much, for I was half 

tipsy with the excitement of the ci of the smo — of wb.at 

had taken place in Dawdley’s stiKhg and with the Maraschino 
and eau-de-Cologne I had drunk. 

“ What a fine odor of lavender-water ! ” said Dawdley, i s 
we rode in the carriage. 

I put my head out of the window and shrieked out a laugh • 
but made no other reply. 

“What’s the joke, George ? ” said Dawdley. “ Did I .^i:y 
anything witty ? ” 

“No,” cried T, yelling still more wildly; “nothing more 
%ittv than usual” " 3^ " 


THE FITZ-BOODLE FA PEES. 


556 


“ Don't be severe, George,^’ said he, with a mortified air: 

and we drove on to B House. 

***** 

There must have been something strange and wild in my 
appearance, and those awful black plumes, as I passed through 
the crowd ; for I observed people looking and making a strange 
nasal noise (it is called sniffing, and I have no other more 
delicate term for it), and making way as I pushed on. But I 
moved forward very fiercely, for the wine, the Maraschino, the 
eau-de-Cologne, and the — the excitement had rendered me al- 
most wild ; and at length I arrived at the place where my Lady 
of the Lake and her Harper stood. How beautiful she looked, 
— all eyes were upon her as she stood blushing. When she 
saw me, however, her countenance assumed the appearance of 
alarm. “ Good heavens, George ! she said, stretching her 
hand to me, what makes you look so wild and pale ? ’’ I ad- 
vanced, and was going to take her hand, when she dropped it 
with a scream. 

“ Ah — ah — ah ! ” she said. ‘‘ Mr. Fitz-Boodle, you’ve been 
smoking ! ” 

There was an immense laugh from four liundred people 
round about us, and the scoundrelly Dawdley joined in the 
yell. I rushed furiously out, and, as I passed, hurtled over the 
fat Hereditary Prince of Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel. 

“ Es riecht hier ungeheuer stark von Tabak ! ” I heard his 
Highness say, as I madly flung myself through the aides-de- 
camp. 

The next day Mary McAlister, in a note full of the most 
odious good sense and sarcasm, reminded me of our agree- 
ment ; said that she was quite convinced that we were not by 
any means fitted for one another, and begged me to consider 
m)^self henceforth quite free. The little wretch had the imper- 
tinence to send me a dozen boxes of cigars, which, she said, 
would console me for my lost love ; as she was perfectly cer- 
tain that I was not mercenary, and that I loved tobacco better 
than any woman in the world. 

I believe she was right, though I have never to this day 
been able to pardon the scoundrelly stratagem by which Dawd- 
ley robbed me of a wife and won one himself. As I was lying 
on his sofa, looking at the moon and lost in a thousand happy 
contemplations. Lord Dawdley, returning from the tailor’s, saw 
me smoking at my leisure. On entering his dressing-room, a 
horrible treacherous thought struck him. “ I must not betray 
my friend,’’ said he ; ‘‘but in love all is fair, and he shall be- 


FITZ-BOODLE'S CONFESSIONS, 


557 

tray himself/’ There were my tartans, my cursed feathers, my 
tiger-skin sporran, upon the sofa. 

He called up my groom ; he made the rascal put on all my 
clothes, and, giving him a guinea and four cigars, bade him 
lock himself into the little pantry and smoke them' without 
taking the clothes off. John did so, and was very ill in conse- 
quence, and so when I came to B House, my clothes were 

redolent of tobacco, and. I lost lovely Mary McAlister. 

I am godfather to one of Lady Dawdley’s boys, and hers is 
the only house where I am allowed to smoke unmolested ; but 
1 have never been able to admire Dawdley, a sly, sournois^ spirit- 
less, lily-livered fellow, that took his name off all his clubs the 
year he married. 


DOROTHEA. 


Beyond sparring and cricket, I do not recollect I learned 
anything useful at Slaughter-House School, where I was edu- 
cated (according to an old family tradition, which sendj? par- 
ticular generations of gentlemen to particular schools in the 
kingdom ; and such is the force of habit, that though I 
hate the place, I shall send my own son thither too, should I 
marry any day). I say I learned little that was useful at 
Slaughter-House, and nothing that was ornamental. I would 
as soon have thought of learning to dance as of learning to 
climb chimneys. Up to the age of seventeen, as I have shown, 
I had a great contempt for the female race, and when age 
brought with it warmer and juster sentiments, where was I ? — I 
could no more dance nor prattle to a young girl than a young 
bear could. I have seen the ugliest little low-bred wretches 
carrying off young and lovely creatures, twirling with them in 
waltzes, whispering between their glossy curls in quadrilles, 
simpering with perfect equanimity, and cutting pas in that 
abominable ‘‘ cavalier seul,’’ until my soul grew sick with fury. 
In a word, I determined to learn to dance. 

But such things are hard to be acquired late in life, when 
the bones and habits of a man are formed. Look at a man in 
a hunting-field who has not been taught to ride as a boy. All 
the pluck and courage in the world will not make the man of 
him that I am, or as any man who has had the advantages of 
early education in the field. 

in the same way with dancing. 'Fhough I went to work with 
immense energy, both in Brewer Street, Golden Square (with 
an advertising fellow), and afterwards with old Coulon at Paris, 
I never was able to be easy in dancing ; and though little 
Coulon instructed me in a smile, it was a cursed forced one, 
that looked like the grin of a person in extreme agony. 1 
once caught sight of it in a glass, and have hardly ever smiled 
since. 

t35>) 


FTTZ-BOODLE CONFESSIONS, 


559 


Most young men about London have gone through that 
strange secret ordeal of the dancing-school. I am given to 
understand that young snobS' from attorneys’ offices, banks, 
shops, and the like, make not the least mystery of their pro- 
ceedings in the saltatory line, but trip gayly, with pumps in 
hand, to some dancing-place about Soho, waltz and quadrille it 
with Miss Greengrocer or Miss Butcher, and fancy they have 
had rather a pleasant evening. There is one house in Dover 
Street, where, behind a dirty curtain, such figures may be seen 
hopping every night, to a perpetual fiddling ; and I have stood 
sometimes wondering in the street, with about six blackguard 
boys wondering too, at the strange contortions of the figures 
jumping up and down to the mysterious squeaking of the ki*. 
Have they no shame ces gens ? are such degrading initiations to 
be held in public ? No, the snob may, but the man of refined 
mind never can submit to show himself in public laboring at 
the apprenticeship of this most absurd art. It is owing, per- 
haps, to this modesty, and the fact that 1 have no sisters at 
home, that I have never thoroughly been able to dance ; for 
though I always arrive at the end of a quadrille (and tha;.k 
heaven for it too !) and though, 1 believe, 1 make no mistake in 
particular, yet I solemnly confess I have never been able 
thoroughly to comprehend the mysteries of it, or what I hcovc 
been about from the beginning to the end of the dance; I 
always look at the lady opposite, and do as she does : if she did 
not know how to dance par hasard^ it would be all up. But if 
they can’t do anything else, women can dance : let us give them 
that praise at least. 

In London, then, for a considerable time, I used to get up 
at eight o’clock in the morning, and pass an hour alone with 
Mr. Wilkinson, of the Theatres Royal, in Golden Square ; — an 
hour alone. It was ‘‘ one, two, three; one, two, three — now 
jump — right foot more out, Mr. Smith ; and if you could try and 
look a little more cheerful ; your partner, sir, would like you 
hall the better.” Wilkinson called me Smith, for the fact is, I 
did not tell him my real name, nor (thank heaven !) does he 
know it to this day. 

I never breathed a w^ord of my doings to any soul among 
my friends ; once a pack of them met me in the strange neigh- 
borhood, when, I am ashamed to say, I muttered something 
about a “ little French milliner,” and walked off, looking as 
knowing as I couli. 

In Paris, tw'o Gambridge-men and myself, who happened to 
be staying at a board ing-liouse together, agreed to go to Cou 


THE FJTZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


560 

Ion, a little creature of four feet high with a pigtail. His room 
w^as hung round with glasses. He made us take off our coats, 
and dance each before a mirror. Once he w^as standing before 
us playing on his kit — the sight of the little master and the 
pupil was so supremely ridiculous, that 1 burst into a yell of 
laughter, which so offended the old man that he w^alked away 
abruptly, and begged me not to repeat my visits. Nor did I. 
I was just getting into waltzing then, but determined to drop 
waltzing, and content myself with quadrilling for the rest of my 
days. 

This was all very well in France and England ; but in Ger- 
many what w’as I to do ? What did Hercules do when Oin- 
phale captivated him ? What did Rinaldo do when Armida 
fixed upon him her twinkling eyes? Nay, to cut all historical 
instances short, by going at once to the earliest, what did Adam 
do when Eve tempted him ? He yielded and became her slave ; 
and so I do heartily trust every honest man wall yield until the 
end of the world — he has no heart who wall not. When I w-as 
in Germany, I say, I began to learn to7£/a/fz. The reader from 
this wall no doubt expect that some new love-adventures befell 
me — nor will his gentle heart be disappointed, dhvo deep and 
tremendous incidents occurred which shall be notified on the 
present occasion. 

The reader, perhaps, remembers the brief appearance of his 

Highness the Duke of Kalbsbraten-Puinpernickel at B 

Flouse, in the first part of my Memoirs, at that unlucky period 
of my life when the Duke was led to remark the odor about 
my clothes, which lost me the hand of Mary McAlister. I some- 
how found myself in his Highness’s territories, of which anybody 
may read a description in the Almanack de Goiha. FI is High- 
ness’s father, as is well known, married Emelia Kunegunda 
Thomasina Charleria Phnanuela Louisa Georgina, Princess of 
Saxe-Pumpernickel, and a cousin of his Flighness the Duke. 
Thus the two principalities w^ere united under one happy sov- 
ereign in the person of Philibert Sigismund Emanuel Maria, 
the reigning Duke, who has received from his country (on 
account of the celebrated pump which he erected in the market- 
place of Kalbsbraten) the well-merited appellation of the Mag- 
nificent. The allegory wdiich the statues round about the pump 
represent, is of a very mysterious and complicated sort. Mi- 
nerva is observed leading up Ceres to a river-god, who has his 
arms round the neck of Pomona ; while Mars (in a full-bot- 
tomed wig) is driven away by Peace, under whose mantle two 
lovely children, representing the Duke’s two provinces, repose. 


• FIJY-JJOOI)LE\S CONFESSIONS. 361 

The celebrated Speck is, as need scarcely be said, the author 
of this piece ; and of other inagnihcent edihces in the Residenz, 
such as the guard-room, the skittle-hall {Grosshcrzogllch Kalbs- 
l^'dien pictnpcrnickelisch Sc/ibit/e/spie/saa/), <S:c., and the superb 
sentry-boxes before the (irand-Ducal Palace. He is Knight 
Grand Ooss of the Ancient Kartoffel Order, as, indeed, is 
almost every one else in his Highnesses dominions. 

The town of Kalbsbraten contains a population of two 
thousand inhabitants, and a palace which would accommodate 
about six times that number. The principality sends three and 
a half men to the German Confederation, who are commanded 
by a General (PAcellency), two Major-Generals, and sixty-four 
officers of lower grades ; all noble, all knights of the Order, and 
almost all chamberlains to his Highness the Grand Duke. An 
excellent band of eighty performers is the admiration of the 
surrounding country, and leads the Grand-Ducal troops to 
battle in time of war. Only three of the contingent of soldiers 
returned from the ]]attle of Waterloo, where they won much 
honor ; the remainder was cut to pieces on that glorious day. 

There is a chamber of representatives (which, however, 
nothing can induce to sit), home and foreign ministers, residents 
from neighboring courts, law presidents, town councils, &c., 
all the adjuncts of a big or little government. The court has 
its chamberlains and marshals, the Grand Duchess her noble 
ladies in waiting, and blushing maids of honor. Thou wert 
one, Dorothea ! Dost remember the poor young Englander ? 
We parted in anger ; but I think — 1 think thou hast not for- 
gotten him. 

The way in which I have Dorothea von Speck present to 
my mind is this ; not as I first saw her in the garden — for her 
hair was in bandeaux then, and a large Leghorn hat with a 
deep ribbon cov^ered half her fair face, — not in a morning-dress, 
which, by the way, was none of the newest nor the best made 
— but as I saw her afterwards at a ball at the pleasant splendid 
little court, where she moved the most beautiful of the beauties 
of Kalbsbraten. The grand saloon of the palace is lighted — 
the Grand Duke and his officers, the Duchess and her ladies, 
have passed through. I, in my uniform of the — th, and ,a 
number of young fellows (who are evidently admiring my legs 
and envying my dlstingid appearance), are waiting round the 
entrance door, where a huge Heyduke is standing, and announc- 
ing the titles of the guests as they arrive. 

“ Herr Oberhof- und- Bau- inspektor von Speck ! ’’ shouts 
the Heyduke ; and the little Inspector comes in. His lady is 


THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS, 


562 

Oil his arm — huge, in towering plumes, and her favorite cos 
tume of light-blue. Fair women always dress in light-blue 01 
light-green ; and Frau von Speck is very stout. 

But who comes behind her ? Lieber Himmel ? It is Doro- 
thea ! Did earth, among all the dowers which have sprung 
from its bosom, produce ever ore more beautiful ? She was 
none of your heavenly beauties, i tell you. She had nothing 
ethereal about her. No, sir ; she was of the earth earthy, and 
must have weighed ten stone four or dve, if she weighed an 
ounce. She had none of your Chinese feet, nor waspy, un- 
healthy waists, which those may admire who will. No : Dora’s 
foot was a good stout one ; you could see her ankle (if her robe 
was short enough) without the aid of a microscope ; and that 
envious little, sour, skinny Amalia von Mangelwlirzel used to 
hold up her four fingers and say (the two girls were most inti- 
mate friends, of course), Dear Dorothea’s vaist is so much 
dicker as dis.” And so 1 have no doubt it was. 

But what then ? Goethe sings in one of his divine epi- 
grams : — 

“ Epicures vaunting their taste, entitle me vulgar and savage, 

Give them their Brussels-sprouts, but I am contented with cabbage.” 

I hate your little women — that is, when I am in love with a 
tall one ; and who would not have loved Dorothea ? 

Fancy her, then, if you please, about five feet four inches 
high — fancy her in the family color of light-blue, a little scarf 
covering the most brilliant shoulders in the world ; and a pair 
of gloves clinging close round an arm that may, perhaps, be 
somewhat too large now, but that Juno might have envied 
then. After the fashion of young ladies on the continent, she 
wears no jewels or gimcracks : her only ornament is a wreath 
of vine-leaves in her hair, with little clusters of artificial grapes. 
Down on her shoulders falls the brown hair, in rich liberal clus- 
ters ; all that health, and good-humor, and beauty can do for 
her face, kind nature has done for hers. Her eyes are frank, 
sparkling, and kind. As for her cheeks, what paint-box or 
dictionary contains pigments or words to describe their red ? 
They say she opens her mouth and smiles always to show the 
dimples in her cheeks. Psha ! she smiles because she is hap- 
py, and kind, and good-humored, and not because her teeth are 
little pearls. 

All the young fellows crowd up to ask her to dance, and, 
taking from her waist a little mother-of-pearl remembrancer, 
she notes them down. Old vSchnabel for the polonaise ; Klin- 


FITZ-BOODLE^S CONFESSIONS, 563 

genspohr, first waltz ; Haarbart, second waltz ; Count Horn* 
pieper (the Danish envoy), third ; and so on. I have said 
w!iy /could not ask her to waltz, and I turned away with a 
pang, and played ecarte with Colonel Trumpenpack all night. 

In thus introducing this lovely creature in her ball-costume, 
1 have been somewhat premature, and had best go back to the 
beginning of the history of my acquaintance with her. 

Dorothea, then, was the daughter of the celebrated Speck 
before mentioned. It is one of the oldest names in Germany, 
where her father’s and mother’s houses, those of Speck and 
Eyer, are loved wherever they are known. Unlike his warlike 
progenitor, Lorenzo von Speck, Dorothea’s father had early 
shown himself a passionate admirer of art ; had quitted home 
to study architecture in Italy, and had become celebrated 
throughout Europe, and been appointed Oberhofarchitect and 
Kunst- und- Bau-inspektor of the united principalities. They 
are but four miles wide, and his genius has consequently but 
little room to play. What art can do, however, he does. The 
palace is frequently whitewashed under his eyes ; the theatre 
painted occasionally ; the noble public buildings erected, of 
which I have already made mention. 

I had come to Kalbsbraten, scarce knowing whither I Went ; 
and having, in about ten minutes, seen the curiosities of the 
place (I did not care to see the King’s palace, for chairs and 
tables have no great charm for me), I had ordered horses ; and 
wanted to get on I cared not whither, when Fate threw Doro- 
thea in my way. I was yawning back to the hotel through the 
palace-garden, a valet-de-place at my side, when I saw a young 
lady seated under a tree reading a novel, her mamma on the 
same bench (a fat woman in light-blue) knitting a stocking, and 
two officers, choked in their stays, with various orders on their 
spinach-colored coats, standing by in first attitudes : the one 
was caressing the fat-lady-in-blue’s little dog ; the other was 
twirling his own mustache, which was already as nearly as pos- 
sible curled into his own eye. 

I don^t know how it is, but I hate to see men evidently inti- 
mate with nice-looking women, and on good terms with them- 
selves. There’s something annoying in their cursed compla- 
cency — their evident sunshiny happiness. I’ve no woman to 
make sunshine for me ; and yet my heart tells me that notone, 
but several such suns, would do good to my system. 

Who are those pert-looking officers,” says I, peevishly, 
to the guide, “ who are talking to those vulgar-looking wo* 
men ? ” 


THE EITZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


564 


‘‘The big one, with the epaulets, is Major von Schnabel; 
the little one, with the pale face, is Stiefel von Klingenspohr.” 

“ And the big blue woman ? ” 

“'The Grand-Ducal Punipernickelian-court-architectress and 
Upper-Palace-and-building-inspectress Von Speck, born V. 
P^yer,” replied the guide. “ Your well-born honor has seen 
the pump in the market-place ; that is the work of the great 
Von Speck.’’ 

“ And yonder young person } ” 

“ Mr. Court-architect’s daughter ; the Fraulein Dorothea.” 
* * * * 

Dorothea looked up from her novel here, and turned her 
face towards the stranger who was passing, and then blushing 
turned it down again. Schnabel looked at me with a scowl, 
Klingenspohr with a simper, the dog with a yelp, the fat lady in 
blue just gave one glance, and seemed, 1 thought, rather well 
pleased. “ Silence, Lischen ! ” said she to the dog. “ Go on, 
darling Dorothea,” she added, to her daughter, who continued 
her novel. 

Her voice was a little tremulous, but very low and rich. 
¥or some reason or other, on getting back to the inn, I coun- 
termanded the horses, and said I would stay for the night. 

i not only stayed that night, but many, many afterwards ; 
and as for the manner in which I became acquainted with the 
Speck family, why it was a good joke against me at the time, 
and I did not like then to have it known ; but now it may as 
well come out at once. Speck, as everybody knows, lives in 
the market-place, opposite his grand work of art, the town 
pump, or fountain. 1 bought a large sheet of paper, and hav- 
ing a knack at drawing, sat down, with the greatest gravity^ 
before the pump, and sketched it for several hours. I knew it 
would bring out old Speck to see. At first he contented him- 
self by battening his nose against the window-glasses of his 
study, and looking what the Pmglander was about. Then he 
put on his gray cap with the huge green shade, and sauntered to 
the door : then he walked round me, and formed one of a band 
of street-idlers who were looking on : then at last he could re- 
strain himself no more, but, pulling off his cap, with a low bow, 
began to discourse upon arts, and architecture in particular. 

“ It is curious,” says he, “ that you have taken the same 
view of which a print has been engraved.” 

“ That is extraordinary,” says I (though it wasn’t, for I had 
traced my drawing at a window off the very print in question). 
I added that I was, like all the world, immensely struck with 


FITZ-BOODLE'S CONFESSIONS. 565 

the beauty of the edifice ; heard of it at Rome, where it was 
considered to be superior to any of the celebrated fountains of 
that capital of the fine arts; finally, that unless perhaps the 
celebrated fountain of Aldgate in London might compare with 
it, Kalbsbraten building, except in that case, was incomparable. 

I'his speech I addressed in French, of which the worthy 
Hofarchitect understood somewhat, and continuing to reply in 
German, our conversation grew pretty close. It is singular 
that I can talk to a man and pay him compliments with tlie 
utmost gravity, whereas, to a woman, I at once lose all self- 
possession, and have never said a pretty thing in my life. 

My operations on old Speck were so conducted, that in a 
quarter of an hour I had elicited from him an invitation to go 
over the town with him, and see its architectural beauties. So we 
walked through the huge half-furnished chambers of the palace, 
we panted up the copper pinnacle of the church-tower, we went 
to see the Museum and Gymnasium, and coming back into the 
market-place again, what could the Hofarchitect do but offer 
me a glass of wine and a seat in his house ? He introduced 
me to his Gattinn, his Leocadia (the fat woman in blue), as 
a young world-observer, and worthy art-friend, a young scion 
of liritish Adel, who had come to refresh himself at the Urquel- 
len of his race, and see his brethren of the great family of Her- 
mann.’^ 

I saw instantly that the old fellow was of a romantic turn, 
this rodomontade to his lady : nor was she a whit less so ; nor 
was Dorothea less sentimental than her mamma. She knew 
everything regarding the literature of Albion, as she was 
pleased to call it ; and asked me news of all the famous writers 
there. I told her that Miss Edgeworth was one of the loveli- 
est young beauties at our court ; I described to her Lady Mor- 
gan, herself as beautiful as the wild Irish girl she drew ; I 
promised to give her a signature of Mrs. Hemans (which I 
wrote for her that very evening) ; and described a fox-hunt, at 
which I had seen Thomas Moore and Samuel Rogers, Esquires ; 
and a boxing-match, in which the athletic author of Pelham 
was pitched against the hardy mountain bard, Wordsworth. 
You see my education was not neglected, for though I have 
never read the works of the above-named ladies and gentlemen, 
yet I knew their names well enough. 

Time passed away. I, perhaps, was never so brilliant in 
conversation as when excited by the Asmanshauser and the 
brilliant eyes of Dorothea that day. She and her parents had 
dined at their usual heathen hour; but I was, I don’t care to 


THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS, 


566 

own it, so smitten, that for the first time in my life I did not 
even miss the meal, and talked on until six o’clock, when tea 
was served. Madame Speck said they always drank it ; and 
so placing a teaspoonful of bohea in a cauldron of water, she 
placidly handed out this decoction, which we took with cakes 
and tartines. I leave you to imagine how disgusted K1 ingen 
spohr and Schnabel looked when they stepped in as usual that 
evening to make their party of whist with the Speck family ! 
Down they v/ere obliged to sit ; and the lovely Dorothea, for 
that night, declined to play altogether, and — sat on the sofa 
by me. 

What we talked about, who shall tell t I would not, for my 
part, break the secret of one of those delicious conversations, 
of which I and every man in his time have held so many. 
You begin, veiy probably, about the weather — ’tis a common 
subject, but what sentiments the genius of Love can fling into 
it ! I have often, for my part, said to the girl of my heart for 
the time being, “ It’s a fine day,” or, “ It’s a rainy morning 1 ” 
in a way that has brought tears to her eyes. Something beats 
in your heart, and twangle ! a corresponding string thrills and 
echoes in hers. You offer her anything — her knitting-needles, 
a slice of bread-and-butter — what causes the grateful blush 
with which she accepts the one or the other? Why, she sees 
your heart handed over to her upon the needles, and the 
bread-and-butter is to her a sandwich with love inside it. If 
you say to your grandmother, “ Ma’am, it’s a fine day,” or 
what not, she would find in the words no other meaning than 
their outward and visible one ; but say so to the girl you love, 
and she understands a thousand mystic meanings in tliem. 
Thus, in a word, though Dorothea and I did not, probably, on 
the first night of our meeting, talk of anything more than the 
weather, or trumps, or some subjects which to such listeners as 
Schnabel and Klingenspohr and others might appear quite 
ordinary, yet to -its they had a different signification, of which 
Love alone held the key. 

Without furtlier ado then, after the occurrences of that 
evening, I determined on staying at Kalbsbraten, and presenting 
my card the next day to the Hof-Marshal, requesting to have 
the honor of being presented to his Highness the ITince, at 
one of whose court-balls my Dorothea appeared as I have 
described her. 

It was summer when I first arrived at Kalbsbraten. The 
little court was removed to Siegmundslust, Ihs Highness’s 
country-seat : no balls were taking place, and, in consequence, 


FJTZ-BOODLE\S CONFESSIOiWS. 567 

I held iny own with Dorotiiea pretty well. 1 treated her ad- 
mirer, Lieutenant Klingenspohr, with perfect scorn, had a 
manifest advantage over Major Schnabel, and used somehow 
to meet the fair one _every day, walking in company with her 
mamma in the palace garden, or sitting under the acacias, with 
Belotte in her mother’s lap, and the favorite romance beside 
her. Dear, dear Dorothea ! what a number of no\ els she must 
have read in her time ! She confessed to me that she had 
been in love with Uncas, with Saint Preux, with Tvanhoe, and 
with hosts of German heroes of romance ; and when I asked 
her if she, whose heart was so tender towards imaginary 
youths, had never had a preference for any one of her living 
adorers, she only looked, and blushed, and sighed, and said 
nothing. 

You see I had got on as well as man could do, until the 
confounded court season and the balls began, and then— why, 
then came my usual luck. 

Waltzing is a part of a German girl’s life. With the best 
will in the world — which, I doubt not, she entertains for me, 
for T never put the matter of marriage directly to her — Doro- 
thea could not go to balls and not Avaltz. It was madness to 
me to see her whirling round the room with officers, attaches^ 
prim little chamberlains with gold keys and embroidered coats, 
her hair floating in the wind, her hand reposing upon the 
abominable little dancer’s epaulet, her good-humored face 
lighted up with still greater satisfaction. I saw that I must 
learn to wmUz too, and took my measures accordingly. 

The leader of the ballet at the Kalbsbraten theatre in my 
time was Springbock, from Vienna. He had been a regular 
Zephyr once, ’tw^as said, in his younger days ; and though he is 
now fifteen stone w'eight, I can, h'clas ! recommend him con- 
scientiously as a master ; and I determined to take some lessons 
from him in the art wdiich I had neglected so foolishly in early 
life. 

It 111 ay be said, without vanity, that I was an apt pupil, and 
in the course of half a dozen lessons I had arrived at very con- 
siderable agility in the waltzing line, and could twirl round the 
room with him at such a pace as made the old gentleman pant 
again, and hardly left him breath enough to puff out a compli- 
ment to his pupil. I may say, that in a single w^eek I became 
an expert w-altzer ; but as I wished, when I came out publicly 
in that character, to be quite sure of myself, and as I had 
hitherto practised not with a lady, but with a very fat old man, 
it w'as agreed that he should bring a lady of his acquaintance 


THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


568 

to perfect me, and accordingly, at my eighth lesson, Madame 
Springbock herself came to the dancing-room, and the old 
Zephyr performed on the violin. 

If any man ventures the least sneer with regard to this lady, 
or dares to insinuate anything disrespectful to her or myself, 
I say at once that he is an impudent calumniator. Madame 
Springbock is old enough to be my grandmother, and as ugly a 
woman as I ever saw’; but, though old, she was passlimfiee pour la 
da?ise, and not having (on account, doubtless, of her age and un- 
prepossessing appearance) many opportunities for indulging in 
her favorite pastime, made up for lost time by immense activity 
whenever she could get a partner. In vain, at the end of the 
hour, would Springbock exclaim, Amalia, my soul’s blessing, 
the time is up ! ” Play on, dear Alphonso ! ” would the old 
lady exclaim, whisking me round : and though I had not tlm 
least pleasure in such a homely partner, yet for the sake of 
perfecting myself, I waltzed and waltzed with her, until we 
were both half dead with fatigue. 

At the end of three weeks I could waltz as well as any man 
in Germany. 

At the end of four weeks there was a grand ball at court in 
honor of H. PI. the Prince of Dummerland and his Princess, 
and ihen I determined I would come out in public. I dressed 
myself with unusual care and splendor. My hair was curled 
and my mustache dyed to a nicety ; and of the four hundred 
gentlemen present, if the girls of Kalbsbraten did select one 
who wore an English hussar uniform, why should I disguise 
the fact ? In spite of my silence, the news had somehow got 
abroad, as news wall in such small towns, — Herr von Fitz- 
Boodle was coming out in a w^altz that evening. His Highness 
•the Duka, even made an allusion to the circumstance. When 
on this eventful night, I w^ent, as usual, and made him my bow 
in the presentation, ‘‘ Vous, monsieur,” said he — “ vous qui 
etes si jeune, devez aimer la danse.” I blushed as red as my 
trousers, and bowing, went away. 

I stepped up to Dorothea. Pleavens ! how beautiful she 
looked ! and how archly she smiled as, wnth a thumping heart, 
I asked her hand for a waltz I She took out her little mother- 
of-penrl dancing-book, she wrote down my name with lier pen- 
cil : w^e were engaged for the fourth w’altz, and till then I left 
her to other partners. 

Who says that his first waltz is not a nervous moment ? I 
vow I was more excited than by any duel I ever fought. I 
would not dance any contre-danse or galop. I repeatedly 


FITZ-DOODLE 'S CONJ-ESSJONii. 


5<J9 


went to \hc buffet and got glasses of j3unch (dear simple Ger- 
many ! 'lis with rum-punch and egg-ilip thy children strengthen 
llicinsclvcs for the dance !). 1 went into the ball-room and 

looked — the couples bounded before me, the music clash.ed 
and rung in iny ears — all was liery, feverish, indistinct. Tl'.c 
gleaming wl'iite columns, tfio polished oaken floors in which 
tkc innumerable tapers were reliected — altogether swam before 
my eyes, and i was in a pitch of madness almost when the 
fourth, waltz at length came. “ JVi/I you dance with your sword 
on sai l tlie sweetest voice in the world. I blushed, and 
stammered, and trembled, as I laid down that weapon and my 
cap, and hark ! the music began ! 

Oh, how my hand trembled as I placed it round the waist 
of IJorothea ! V/ith my left hand 1 took her right — did sh.e 
squeeze it ? I think she did — to this day I think sh.e did. 
Away wc went ! we tripped over the polished oak floor like two 
young fairies. “ Courage, monsieur,'' said she, with her sweet 
smile, dlren it was “ Tres bicn, monsieur." Then I heard 
t!m voices humming and buzzing about. ‘‘ II danse bien, 
rAnglais." kla foi, oui," says another. On we went, 
twirling and twisting, and turning and whirling ; couple after 
couple dropped panting off. Little Klingenspohr himself was 
obliged to give in. All eyes were upon us— we were going 

round alone. Idorothea was almost exhausted, when 

# * * * 


I have been sitting for tw'o hours since I marked the aste- 
risks, thinking — thinking. I have committed crimes in my life 
— wlVo hasn’t ? Tut talk of remorse, what remorse is there like 
that which rushes up in a flood to my brain sometimes when I 
am alone, and causes me to blush when I’m abed in the dark } 

I fell, sir, on that infernal slippery floor. Down we came 
like shot ; we rolled over and over in the midst of the ball-room, 
the music going ten miles an hour, 800 pairs of eyes fixed upon 
us, a cursed slmiek of laughter bursting out from all sides. 
Heavens ! liow clear I heard it, as we went on rolling and roll- 
ing ! “ Mv child ! my Dorothea I " shrieked out kladame Speck, 
rushing forward, and as> soon as she had breath to do so, 
Dorothea of course screamed too ; then she fainted, tlien sl:e 
was disentangled from out my spurs, and borne off by a bevy 
of tittering women. Clumsy brute ! " said l\Iadame Speck, 
turning her fat back upon me. I remained upon my seant, 
wild, ghastly, looking about. It was all up with me — I knew it 
was. T wished I could have dicrl there, and I wish so still. 

Klingenspohr married her, that is the long and short ; but 


57 ^ 


THE EITZ-BOODLE EATERS. 


before that event I placed a sabre-cut across the 3'oung scoun* 
drel’s nose, which destroyed his beauty forever. 

O Dorothea! you can’t forgive me — v’ou oughtn’t to forgive 
me ; but I love you madly still. 

My next flame was Ottilia : but let us keep her for anothei 
number ; mv feelings overpower me at oreSent. 


OTTILIA. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE ALBUM THE MEDITERRANEAN HEATH. 

Travelling some little time back in a wild part of Conne- 
mara, where I had been for fishing and seal-shooting, 1 had the 
good luck to get admission to the chateau of a hospitable Irish 
gentleman, and to procure some news of my once dear Ottilia. 

Yes, of no other than Ottilia v. Schlippenschlopp, the Muse 
of Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickel, the friendly little town far awa}^ 
in Sachsenland, — where old Speck built the town pump, where 
Klingenspohr was slashed across the nose, — where Dorothea 

rolled over and over in that horrible waltz with Fitz-Boo 

Psha ! — away with the recollection : but wasn’t it strange to get 
news of Ottilia in the wildest corner of Ireland, where I never 
should have thought to hear her gentle name ? Walking on 
that very Urrisbeg Mountain under whose shadow I heard 
Ottilia’s name, Mackay, the learned author of the Flora Pat- 
landica,” discovered the Mediterranean heath, — such a flower 
as I have often plucked on the sides of Vesuvius, and as Pros- 
erpine, no doubt, amused herself in gathering as she strayed 
in the fields of Enna. Here it is — the self-same flower, peering 
out at the Atlantic from Roundstone Bay ; here, too, in this 
wild lonely place, nestles the fragrant memory of my Ottilia ! 

In a word, after a day on Ballylynch Lake (where, with a 
brown fly and a single hair, I killed fourteen salmon, the smallest 
twenty-nine pounds weight, the largest somewhere about five 
stone ten), my young friend Blake Bodkin Lynch Browne (a fine 
lad who has made his continental tour) and I adjourned, after 
dinner, to the young gentleman’s private room, for the purpose 
of smoking a certain cigar ; v.ifich is never more pleasant than 

37 ^570 


THE FJTZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


572 

after hard day's sport, or a day spent in-doors, or after a good 
dinner, or a bad one, or at night when you are tired, or in the 
morning when you are fresh, or of a cold winter's day, or of a 
scorching summer’s afternoon, or at any other .moment you 
choose to fix upon. 

What should I see in Blake’s room but a rack of pipes, such 
asr are to be found in almost all the bachelors’ rooms in Ger- 
many, and amongst them was a porcelain pipe-head bearing the 
image of the Kalbsbraten pump! There it was: the old spout, 
the old familiar allegory of Mars, Bacchus, Apollo virorum, and 
the rest, that I liad so often looked at from Hofarchitect Speck’s 
window, as I sat there by the side of Dorothea. The old gentle- 
man had given me one of these very pipes ; for he had hundreds 
of them painted, wherewith he used to gratify almost every 
stranger who came into his native town. 

Any old place with which I have once been familiar (as, per- 
haps, I have before stated in these “ Confessions ” — but never 
mind that) is in some sort dear to me : and were I Lord Shoot- 
ingcastle or Colonel Popland, I think after a residence of six 
months there I should love the Fleet Prison. As I saw the old 
familiar pipe, I took it down, and crammed it with Cavendish 
tobacco, and lay down on a sofa, and puffed away for an hour 
wellnigh, thinking of old, old times. 

“ You’re very entertaining to-night, Fitz,” says young Blake, 
who had made several tumblers of punch for me, which I liad 
gulped down without saying a word. Don’t ye think ye’d be 
more easy in bed than snorting and sighing there on my sofa, 
and groaning fit to make me go hang myself.^ ” 

“ I am thinking, Blake,” says I, “about Pumpernickel, where 
old Speck gave 3 ^ou this pipe.” 

“ ’Deed he did,” replies the young man ; “ and did ye know 
the old Bar’ll ? ” 

“ I did,” said I. “ My friend, I have been by the banks of 
the Bendemeer. Tell me, are the nightingales still singing 
there, and do the roses still bloom ? ” 

“ The hwhat ? ” cries Blake. “ What the divvle, Fifez, are 
you growling about ? Bendemeer Lake’s in Westmoreland, as I 
preshume ; and as for roses and nightingales, 1 give ye my word 
it’s Greek ye’re talking to me.” And Greek it very possibly 
was, for my young friend, though as good across country as any 
man in his county, has not the fine feeling and tender percep- 
tion of beauty which may be found elsewhere, dear madam. 

“Tell me about Speck, Blake, and Kalbsbraten, and 
Dorothea, and Klingenspohr her husband.” 


FITZ-BOODLE'S CONFESSIONS, 


573 

He with the cut across the nose, is it ? cries Blake. “ I 
know him well, and his old wife.” 

‘‘ His old what, sir ! ” cries Idtz-Boodle, jumping up from his 
seat. Klingenspohr’s wife old! — Is he married again? — Is 
Dorothea, then, d-d-dead ? ” 

‘‘ Dead ! — no more dead than you are, only I take her to be 
hv^e-and-thirty. And when a woman has had nine children, you 
know, she looks none the younger ; and I can tell ye, that when 
she trod on my corruns at a ball at the Grand Juke’s, I felt 
something heavier than a feather on my foot.” 

“ Madame de Klingenspohr, then,” replied I, hesitating 
somewhat, ‘‘ has grown rather — rather st-st-out ? ” I could 
hardly get out the out^ and trembled I don’t know why as I 
asked the question. 

‘‘ Stout, begad ! — she weighs fourteen stone, saddle and 
bridle. That’s right, down goes my pipe ; flop I crash falls the 
tumbler into the fender ! Break away, my boy, and remember, 
whoever breaks a glass here pays a dozen.” 

The fact was, that the announcement of Dorothea’s changed 
condition caused no small disturbance within me, and I 
expressed it in the abrupt manner mentioned by young Blake. 

Roused thus from my reverie, I questioned the young fellow 
about his residence at Kalbsbraten, which has been always since 
the war a favorite place for our young gentry, and heard with 
some satisfaction that Potzdorff was married to the Behrenstein, 
Haarbart had left the dragoons, the Crown Prince had broken 

with the , but mum 1 of what interest are all these details 

to the reader, who has never been at friendly little Kalbs- 
braten ? 

Presently Lynch reaches me down one of the three books 
that formed his library (the Racing Calendar ” and a book of 
fishing-flies making up the remainder of the set). “ And there’s 
my album,” says he. “ Yoirll find plenty of hands in it that 
you’ll recognize, as you are an old Pumpernickelaner.” And 
so I did, in truth : it was a little book after the fashion of Ger- 
man albums, in which good simple little ledger every friend or 
acquaintance of the owner inscribes a poem or stanza from some 
favorite poet or philosopher with the transcriber’s own name, 
as thus : — 


“ To the true house-friend, and beloved Irelandish youth. 

‘ Sera nunqziam est ad bonos morea via.* 

Wackerbart, Professor at the 
Grand-Ducal Kalbsbraten-Pumpernickelisch Gymnasium.* 


574 


THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS, 


Another writes, — 

'* ‘ Wander on roses and for^^et 7ne notP 

Amalia v. Nachtmutzk. 

GeB V. SCHLAFROCK,” 

with a flourish, and the picture mayhap of a rose. Let the 
reader imagine some hundreds of these interesting inscriptions, 
and he will have an idea of the book. 

Turning over the leaves I came presently on Dorothea's 
hand. There it was, the little neat, pretty handwriting, the 
dear old up-and-down-strokes that I had not looked at for 
many a long year, — the Mediterranean heath, which grew on 
the sunniest banks of Fitz- Boodle’s existence, and here found, 
dear, dear little sprig! in rude Galwagian bog-lands. 

“ Look at the other side of the page,” says Lynch, rather 
sarcastically (for I don’t care to confess that I kissed the name 
of “ Dorothea v. Klingenspohr, born v. Speck ” written under 
an extremely feeble passage of verse.) “ Look at the other 
side of the paper ! ” 

I did, and what do you think I saw ? 

I saw the writing of five of the little Klingenspohrs, who 
have all sprung up since my time. 

# # # # 

“ Ha ! ha I haw ! ” screamed the impertinent young Irish- 
man, and the story was all over Connemara and Joyce’s. Coun- 
try in a day after. 


CHAPTER 11. 

OTTILIA IN PARTICULAR. 

Some kind critic who peruses these writings will, doubtless, 
have the goodness to point out that the simile of the Mediter- 
ranean heath is applied to two personages in this chapter — to 
Ottilia and Dorothea, and say, Psha I the fellow is but a poor 
unimaginative creature not to be able to find a simile apiece at 
least for the girls ; how much better would we have done the 
business ! 

Well, it is a very pretty simile. The girls were rivals, were 
beautiful, I loved them both, — which should have the sprig of 
heath 't Mr. Cruikshank (who has taken to serious painting) 


FITZ-BOODLE^S CONFESSIONS, 


575 


is getting ready for the exhibition a fine piece, representing 
Fitz-Boodle on the Urrisbeg Mountain, county Galway, Ireland, 
with a sprig of heath in his hand, hesitating, like Paris, on 
which of the beauties he should bestow it. In the background 
is a certain animal between two bundles of hay ; but that I 
take to represent the critic, puzzled to which of my young 
beauties to assign the choice. 

If Dorothea had been as rich as Miss Coutte, and had 
come to me the next day after the accident at the ball and 
said, George, will you marry me ” it must not be supposed I 
would have done any such thing. That dream had vanished 
forev'er ; rage and pride took the place of love ; and the only 
chance I had of recovering from my dreadful discomfiture was 
by bearing it bravely, and trying, if possible, to awaken a little 
compassion in my favor. I limped home (arranging my scheme 
with great presence of mind as I actually sat spinning there 
on the ground) — I limped heme, sent for Pflastersticken, the 
court-surgeon, and addressed him to the following effect : 
‘‘ Pflastersticken,’’ says I, “there has been an accident at court 
of which you will hear. You will send in leeches, pills, and 
the deuce knows what, and you will say that I have dislocated 
my leg : for some days you will state that I am in considerable 
danger. You are a good fellow and a man of courage I know, 
for which very reason you can appreciate those qualities in 
another ; so mind, if you breathe a word of my secret, either 
you or I must lose a life.” 

Away went the surgeon, and the next day all Kalbsbraten 
knew that I was on the point of death : I had been delirious 
all night, had had eighty leeches, besides I don’t know how 
much medicine ; but the Kalbsbrateners knew to a scruple. 
Whenever anybody was ill, this little kind society knew what 
medicines were prescribed. Everybody in the town knew what 
everybody had for dinner. If Madame Rumpel had her satin 
dyed ever so quietly, the whole society was on the qui rive; if 
Countess Pultuski sent to Berlin for a new set of teeth, not a 
person in Kalbsbraten but what was ready to compliment her 
as she put them on ; if Potzdorff paid his tailor’s bill, or Muf- 
finstein bought a piece of black wax for his mustaches, it was 
the talk of the little city. And so, of course, was my accident. 
In their sorrow for my misfortune, Dorothea’s was quite for- 
gotten, and those eighty leeches saved me. I became inter- 
esting ; I had cards left at my door ; and I kept my room for 
a fortnight, during which time I read every one of M. Kotze- 
bue’s plays. 


576 


THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


At the end of that period I W3.s convalescent, though still a 
little lame. I called at old Speck’s house and apologized for 
my clumsiness, with the most admirable coolness ; I appeared 
at court, and stated calmly that I did not intend to dance any 
more ; and when Klingensphor grinned, I told that young gen- 
tlemen such a piece of my mind as led to his wearing a large 
stick-ing-plaster patch on his nose : which was split as neatly 
down the middle as you would split an orange at dessert. In 
a word, what man could do to repair my defeat, I did. 

There is but one thing now of which I am ashamed — of 
those killing epigrams which I wrote (?no/i Dieu ! must I own 
it? — but even the fury of my anger proves the extent of my 
love !) against the Speck family. They were handed about in 
confidence at court, and made a frightful sensation : 

“ Is it possible ? 

“ Tliere happened at Schloss P-mp-rn-ckel, 

A strange mishap our sides to tickle, 

And set the people in a roar ; — 

A strange caprice of Fortune fickle; 

I never thought at Pumpernickel 
To see a S peck upon the floor ! ” 

** La Perfldc Albion ; or, a Caution to IValzters, 

“ ‘ Come to the dance,’ the Briton said, 

And forward D-r-th-a led. 

Fair, fresh, and three-and-twenty ! 

All, girls, beware of Britons red! 

What wonder that it turned her head? 

Sat verbum sapienti.” 

“ Reasons for not Marrying. 

“ ‘The lovely Miss S. 

Will surely say “ yes,” 

You’ve only to ask and try ; ’ 

‘That subject we’ll quit,’ 

Says Georgy the wit, 

‘ Pve a much better Spec in my eye / ” 

This last epigram especially was voted so killing that it flew 
lik'^ wildfire ; and I know for a fact that our Charge crAffaires 
at Kalbsbraten sent a courier express with it to the Foreign 
Office in England, whence, through our amiable Foreign Secre- 
tary, Lord P-lm-rston, it made its way into every fashionable 
circle : nay, I have reason to believe caused a smile on the cheek 
of R-v-lty itself. Now that Time has taken away the sting of 
these 'epigrams, there can be no harm in giving them; and 
Twas well enough to endeavor to hide under the lash of wit the 
bitter pangs of humiliation : but my heart bleeds now to think 
that I should have ever brought a tear on the gentle cheek of 
Dorothea. 


FITZ-BOODLE\S CONFESSIONS. 


577 


Not content with this — with humiliating her by satire, and 
with wounding her accepted lover across the nose — I deter- 
mined to carry my revenge still farther, and to fall in love with 
somebody else, 'bhis person was Ottilia v. Schlippenschlopp. 

Otho Sigismund h'reyherr von Schlippenschlopp, Knight 
Grand Cross of the Ducal Order of the Two-Necked Swan of 
Pumpernickel, of the Porc-et-Siflet of Kalbsbraten, Commander 
of the George and Blue-Boar of Dummerland, Excellency, and 
High Chancellor of the United Duchies, lived in the second 
floor of a house in the Schwapsgasse ; where, with his private 
income and his revenues as Chancellor, amounting together to 
300/. per annum, he maintained such a state as very few other 
officers of the Grand Ducal Crown could exhibit. The Baron 
is married to Maria Antoinetta, a Countess of the house of 
Kartoffelstadt, branches of which have taken root all over Ger- 
many. He has no sons, and but one daughter, the Fraulein 
Ottilia. 

The Chancellor is a worthy old gentleman, too fat and 
wheezy to preside at the Privy Council, fond of his pipe, his 
ease, and his rubber. His lady is a very tall and pale Roman- 
nosed Countess, who looks as gentle as Mrs. Robert Roy, 
where, in the novel, she is for puUiag Baillie Nicol Jarvie into 
the lake, and who keeps the honest Chancellor in the greatest 
order. The Fraulein Ottilia had not arived at Kalbsbraten 
when the little affair between me and Dorothea was going on ; 
or rather had only just come in* for the conclusion of it, being 
presented for the first time that year at the ball where I — 
where I met with my accident. 

At the time when the Countess was young, it was not the 
fashion in her country to educate the young ladies so highly as 
since they have been educated ; and provided they could waltz, 
sew, and make pudding, they were thought to be decently bred ; 
being seldom called upon for algebra or Sanscrit in the dis- 
charge of the honest duties of their lives. But Fraulein Ot- 
tilia was of the modern school in this respect, and came back 
from her pension at Strasburg speaking all the languages, dab- 
bling in all the sciences ; an historian, a poet, — a blue of the 
ultramarinest sort, in a word. What a difference there was, 
for instance, between poor, simple Dorothea’s love of novel- 
reading and the profound encyclopaedic learning of Ottilia ! 

Before the latter arrived from Strasburg (where she had 
been under the care of her aunt the canoness. Countess Ottilia 
of Kartoffelstadt, to whom I here beg to offer my humblest 
respects), Dorothea had passed for a hd esprit in the little 


THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


11 ^ 

court circle, and her little simple stock of accomplishments 
had amused us all very well. She used to sing “ Herz, mein 
Herz and “ T’en souviens-tu,” in a decent manner {once., be- 
fore heaven, I thought her singing better than Grisi’s), and 
then she had a little album in which she drew flowers, and used 
to embroider slippers wonderfully, and was very merry at a 
game of loto or forfeits, and had a hundred sitiall agrcmcfis de 
societe which rendered her an acceptable member of it. 

But when Ottilia arrived, poor Dolly’s reputation was 
crushed in a month. The former wrote poems both in French 
and German ; she painted landscapes and portraits in real oil ; 
and she twanged ofl a rattling piece of Listz or Kalkbrenner 
in such a brilliant way, that Dora scarcely dared to touch the 
i)^strument after her, or venture, after Ottilia had trilled and 
gurgled through “ Una voce,” or “ Di piacer ” (Rossini was 
in fashion then), to lift up her little modest pipe in a ballad. 
What was the use of the poor thing going to sit in the park 
where so many of the young officers used ever to gather round 
her Whirr! Ottilia went by galloping on a chestnut mare 
with a groom after her, and presently all the young fellows who 
could buy or hire horseflesh were prancing in her train. 

When they met, Ottilia would bounce towards iier soul’s 
darling, and put her hands round her waist, and call her by a 
thousand affectionate names, and then talk of her as only ladies 
or authors can talk of one another. How tenderly she would 
hint at Dora’s little imperfections of education ! — how cleverly 
she would insinuate that the poor girl had no wit 1 and, thank 
God, no more she had. The fact is, that do what I will I see 
I’m in love with her still, and would be if she had fifty chil- 
dren ; but my passion blinded me then., and every arrow that 
fiery Ottilia discharged I marked with savage joy. Dolly, 
thank heaven, didn’t mind the wit much ; she was too simple 
for that. But still the recurrence of it would leave in her 
heart a vague, indefinite feeling of pain, and somehow she 
began to understand that her empire was passing away, and 
that her dear friend hated her like poison ; and so she married 
Klingenspohr. I have written myself almost into a reconcilia- 
tion with the silly fellow ; for the truth is, he has been a good, 
honest husband to her, and she has children, and makes pud- 
dings, and is happy. 

Ottilia was pale and delicate. She wore her glistening 
black hair in bands, and dressed in vapory white muslin. She 
sang her own words to her harp, and they commonly insinu- 
ated that she was alone in the world, — that she suffered some 


FITZ-BOODLE'S CONFESSIONS, 


579 


inexpressible and mysterious heart-pangs, the lot of all finer 
geniuses, — that though she lived and moved in the world she 
was not of it, — that she was of a consumptive tendency and 
might look for a premature interment. She even had fixed on the 
spot where she should lie : the violets grew there, she said, the 
river went moaning by; the gray willow whispered sadly over 
her head, and her heart pined to be at rest. ‘‘Mother,” she 
would say, turning to her parent, “promise me — promise me to 
lay me in that spot when the parting hour has come ! ” At 
which Madame de Schlippenschlopp would shriek, and grasp 
her in her arms ; and at which, I confess, I would myself blub^ 
ber like a child. She had six darling friends at school, and 
every courier from Kalbsbraten carried off whole reams of her 
letter-paper. 

In Kalbsbraten, as in every other German town, there are 
a vast number of literary characters, of whom our young friend 
quickly became the chief. They set up a literary journal, which 
appeared once a week, upon light-blue or primrose paper, and 
which, in compliment to the lovely Ottilia’s maternal name, 
was called the Kartoffcbikranz. Here are a couple of her 
ballads extracted from the lO^anz^ and by far the most cheerful 
specimen of her style. For in her songs she never would will- 
ingly let off the heroines without a suicide or a consumption. 
She never would hear of such a thing as a happy marriage, 
and had an appetite for grief quite amazing in so young a per- 
son. As for her dying and desiring to be buried under the 
willow-tree, of which the first ballad is the subject, though I 
believed the story then, I have at present some doubts about 
it. For, since the publication of my Memoirs, I have been 
thrown much into the society of literary persons (who admire 
my style hugely), and egad ! though some of them are dismal 
enough in their works, I find them in their persons the least 
sentimental class that ever a gentleman fell in with. 


“ THE WILLOW-TREE. 


“ Know ye the willow-tree 
Whose gray leaves quiver, 


Whispering gloomily 
To yon pale river ? 


Soon as she saw the tree, 
Her step moved fleeter. 


No one was there — ah me I 
No one to meet her! 


Lady, at even-tide 
Wander not near it : 


“ Quick beat her heart to hear 
The far bell’s chime 


They say its branches hide 
A sad, lost spirit ! 


Toll from the chapel-tower 
The trysting time : 


** Once to the willow-tree 
A maid came fearful, 


But the red sun went down 
In go’den flame, 


Pale seemed her cheek to bci 


And though she looki^d round, 
Yet no one came ! 


Her blue eye tearful ; 


THE FJTZ--BOODLE PAPERS. 


500 


“ Presently came the night, 
Sacliy to greet her, — 
Moon in lier silver liglit. 
Stars in their glitter. 

‘‘ Then sanl; tne moon away 
Un ier tlie billow, 

Stib wept the maid alone — 
There by the willow! 

Through tlie long darkness. 
By the stream rolling, 
Hour after hour went on 
Tolling and tolling. 

Long was the efarkness, 
Lone y and stilly ; 

Shrill came the night wind, 
Piercing and chilly. 


“ Shrill blew' the morning breeze, 
liiting and cold, 

Bleak peers the gray dawn 
Over the wold. 

Bleak over moor and stream 
Looks the gray daw’ii, 

. Gray, with dishevelled liair, 

Still stands the willow there — 

The maid is gone! 

“ Domine^ Do mine ! 

Sin^^ we a liianvy — 

Sin^ for poor inaiden-hearis broken and 
we try ; 

Doini)ie.i Dojnine ! 

S'/n t^ we a litany^ 

I Vail we and weeP we a wild Miserere f ” 


One of the chief beauties of this ballad (for the translation of 
which I received some well-merited compliments) is the delicate 
way in which the suicide of the poor young woman under the 
willow-tree is hinted at ; for that she threw herself into the 
water and became one among the lilies of the stream, is as 
clear as a pikestaff. Her suicide is committed some time in 
the darkness, when the slow lioiirs move on tolling and tolling, 

and is hinted at darkly as behts the time and the deed. 

«/ 

But that unromantic brute, Van Cutsem, the Dutch Charge- 
d’Affaires, sent to the Kartoffdukrauz of the week after a con- 
clusion of the ballad, which shows what a poor creature he 
must be. His pretext for writing it was, he said, because he 
could not bear such melancholy endings to poems and young 
women, and therefore he submitted the following lines : — 


I. 

“ Long by the willow-trees 
Vainly they sought her, 

Wild rang the inotlier’s screams 
O’er the gray water: 

‘ Where is my lovely one ? 
WMiere is my daughter? 

II. 

“ ‘ Rouse thee, Sir Constable — 
Rouse thee and look ; 
Fisherman, bring your net. 
Boatman, your hook. 

Beat in the lily-beds. 

Dive in the brook ! ’ 


III. 

“ Vainly the constable 

Shouted and called her ; 
Vainly the fisherman 
Beat the green alder ; 
Vainly lie flung the net, 
Never it hauled her ! 


IV. 

Mother, beside the fire 
Sat; her niglncaii in ; 

Father, in ea.-y-chair, 

Gloomily naiiping ; 

W^hen at the window-sill 
Came a light tapping ! 

V. 

“ And a pale countenance 

Looked through the casement. 

Loud beat the mother’s heart. 
Sick with amazement ; 

And at the vision, which 
Came to surprise her, 

Shrieked 'u an agony — 

‘ Lor’ ! it’s Elizar ! ’ 

VI. 

Yes, ’twas Elizabeth — 

Yes, ’twas their girl ; 

Pale was her cheek, and her 
I lair out of curl. 

‘ M )tl'.cr! ’ the loving one, 
Blushin", exclaimed, 

* Let 111 a your innocent 
Lizzy be blamed. 


PITZ-BOODLE 'S CONFESSIONS. 


S8i 


VII. 

‘Yesterday, going to aunt 
Jones’s to ton, 

Motlier, dear mother, I 
Fors^ot the door-key I 
And as the night was cold, 
And the way steep, 

Mrs. Jones kept me to 
Breakfast and sleep. 

VIII. 

‘ Whether her Pa and Ma 
Fully believed her, 

That we shall never know : 
Stern they received her ; 


And for tire work of that 
Cruel, though sh.ort, night, 
Sent her to bed without 
Tea for a fortnight. 


IX. 

‘ MORAL. 

Hey diddle diddleiy. 

Cat and the P'iddlety^ 

Maidens of England take cantion by 
she ! 

Let love and sjticid - 
Never tempt you a ids. 

And always remember to take Ou 
door-key / ” 


Some people laughed at this parody, and even preferred it 
to. the original ; ])ut for myself I have no patience with the im 
dividual who can turn the finest sentiments of our nature into 
ridicule, and make everything sacred a subject of scorn. The 
next ballad is less gloomy than that of the willow-trt'e, and 
in it the lovely writer expresses lier longing for what has 
charmed us all, and as it were, squeezes the whole spirit of the 
fairv tale into a few stanzas : — 

“FAIRY DAYS. 


“ Beside the old hall-fire — upon my nurse’s knee, 

Of happy fairy days — what tales were told to me I 
I thought the world was once — all peopled with princesses, 

And my heart would beat to hear — their loves and their distresses ; 
And many a quiet night, — in .slumber sweet and deep, 

The pretty fairy people — would visit me in sleep. 

“ I saw them in my dreams — come flying east and west, 

With wondrous f dry gifts — the new born babe they bless’d ; 

One has brou.ght a j . wel — and one a crown of gold. 

And one has brouglit a curse — but she is Nvrinkled and old. 

'J'he gentle queen turns pale — to hear those words of sin, 

But the king lie only laughs — and bids the dance begin. 

“The babe has .grown to be — the fairest of the land 
And rides tiu fare.'.t green — a iiawk upon her hand. 

An ambling palfrey white — a golden robe and crown ; 

I’ve seen her in my dreams — riding up and down ; 

And heard the o.gre laugh — as she fell into his snare. 

At the little tender creature — w’ho wept and tore her hair! 

“ But ever when it seemed — her need was at the sorest 
A prince in shining mail — comes prancing through the forest. 

A waving ostrich-plume — a buckler burnished briglit ; 

I’ve seen liim in my dreams— good sooth! a gallant knight. 

His lips are coral red — beneath a dark mustache ; 

Sec how he w-aves liis hand — and how his blue eyes flash* ! 

“ ‘ Come forth, thou Paynim knight ! ’ — he shouts in accents clear 
The giant and the maid — both tremble his voice to hear. 

Saint Mary guard him well ! — he draws his falchion keen, 

The giant and the knight — are fighting on the green. 

I see them in my dreams — his blade gives stroke on stroke, 

The giant pants and reels — and tumbles like an oak ! 



THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


582 


“ With what a blushing grace — he. falls upon his knee 
And takes the lady’s hand — and whispers, ‘ You are free I * 

Ah ! happy childish tales — of knight and faerie ! 

I waken from my dreams — but there’s ne’er a knight ior me ? 

I waken from my. dreams — and wish that I could be 
A child by the old hal.-fire — upon my nurse’s knee.” 

Indeed, Ottilia looked like a fairy herself : pale, small, slim, 
and airy. You could not see her face, as it were, for her eyes, 
which were so wild, and so tender, and shone so that they 
would have dazzled an eagle, much more a poor goose of a 
Fitz-Boodle. In the theatre, when she sat on the opposite side 
of the house, those big eyes used to pursue me as 1 sat pretend- 
ing to listen to the “ Zauberfiote,” or to “Don Carlos,” or 
“ Egmont,” and at the tender passages, especially, they would 
have such a winning, weeping, imploring look with them as 
flesh and blood could not bear. 

Shall I tell how I became a poet for the dear girl’s sake ? 
’Tis surely unnecessary after the reader has perused the above 
versions of her poems. Shall I tell what wild follies I com- 
mitted in prose as well as in verse ? how I used to watch under 
her window of icy evenings, and with chilblainy fingers sing 
.serenades to her on the guitar ? Shall I tell how, in a sledging- 
party, I had the happiness to drive her, and of the delightful 
privilege which is, on these occasions, accorded to the driver ? 

Any reader who has spent a winter in Germany perhaps 
knows it. A large party of a score or more of sledges is 
formed. Away they go to some pleasure-house that has been 
previously fixed upon, where a ball and collation are prepared, 
and where each man, as his partner descends, has the delicious 
privilege of saluting her. O heavens and earth ! I may grow to 
be a thousand years old, but I can never forget the rapture of 
that salute. 

“ The keen air has given me an appetite,” said the dear 
angel, as we entered the supper-room ; and to say the truth, 
fairy as she was, she made a remarkably good meal — consuming 
a couple of basins of white soup, several kinds of German 
sausages, some 'Westphalia ham, some white puddings, an 
ancliovy-salad made with cornichons and onions, sweets in- 
numerable, and a considerable quantity of old Steinwein and 
rum-punch afterwards. Then she got up and danced as brisk 
as a fairy; in which operation I of course did not follow her, 
but had the honor, at the close of the evening’s amusement, once 
more to have her by my side in the sledge, as we swept in the 
moonlight over the snowc 

Kalbsbraten is a very hospitable place as far as tea-parties 


FITZ-BOODLE^S CONFESSIONS, ^83 

are concerned, but I never was in one where dinners were so 
scarce. At the palace they occurred twice or thrice in a month ; 
but on these occasions spinsters were not invited, and I seldom 
had the opportunity of seeing my Ottilia except at evening- 
parties. 

Nor are these, if the truth must be told, very much to my 
taste. Dancing I have forsworn, whist is too severe a study 
for me, and I do not like to play ecarte with old ladies, who are 
sure to cheat you in the course of an evening’s play. 

But to have an occasional glance at Ottilia was enough ; 
and many and many a napoleon did I lose to her mamma, 
Madame de Schlippenschlopp, for the blest privilege of looking 
at her daughter. Many is the tea-party I went to, shivering 
into cold clothes after dinner (which is my abomination) in 
order to have one little look at the lady of my soul. 

At these parties there were generally refreshments of a 
nature more substantial than mere tea — punch, both milk and 
rum, hot wine, consomme,, and a peculiar and exceedingly dis- 
agreeable sandwich made of a mixture of cold white puddings 
and garlic, of which I have forgotten the name, and always 
detested the savor. 

Gradually a conviction came upon me that OX,\}X\7\. ate a great 
deal, 

I do not dislike to see a woman eat comfortably. I even 
think that an agreeable woman ought to be friande,, and should 
love certain little dishes and knicknacks. I know that though 
at dinner they commonly take nothing, they have had roast- 
mutton with the children at two, and laugh at their pretensions 
to starvation. 

No ! a woman who eats a grain of rice, like Amina in the 
“Arabian Nights,” is absurd and unnatural; but there is a 
modus in rebus : there is no reason why she should be a ghoul, 
a monster, an ogress, a horrid gormandizeress — faugh ! 

It was, then, with a rage amounting almost to agony, that I 
found Ottilia ate too much at every meal.' She was always 
eating, and always eating too much. If I went there in the 
morning, there was the horrid familiar odor of those oniony 
sandwiches ; if in the afternoon, dinner had been just removed, 
and I was choked by reeking reminiscences of roast-meat. 
Tea we have spoken of. She gobbled up more cakes than any 
six people present ; then came the supper and the sandwiches 
again, and the egg-flip and the horrible rum-punch. 

She was as thin as ever — paler if possible than ever: — but, 
by heavens ! her ?iose bcgati to grow r^d ! 


5^4 


Tim FTTZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


Mo?i Dieu I liow i used to ’vvatch and watch it ! Some days 
it was purple, some days had more of the vermilion — I could 
take an aflidavit that after a heavy night’s supper it was more 
swollen, more red than before. 

I recollect one night when we were playing a round game (T 
had been looking at her nose very eagerly and sadly for some 
time), she of herself brought up the conversation about eating- 
and confessed that she had five meals a day. 

That accounts for it ! ” says I, Hinging down the cards, and 
springing up and rushing like a madman out of the room. I 
rushed away into the night, and wrestled with my passion. 
“What! Mary,” said I, “a woman who eats meat twenLy-one 
times in a week, besides breakfast and tea ? Mary a sarcopha- 
gus, a cannibal, a butchers shop ? — Away ! ” I strove and 
strove. I drank, I groaned, I wrestled and fought with my 
love — but if overcame me : one look of those eyes brought me 
to her feet again. I yielded myself up like a slave ; I fawned 
and whined for her ; 1 thought her nose was not so 7-’cry red. 

Things came to this pitch that I sounded his Highness’s 
Minister to know whether he would give me service in the 
Duchy; I thought of purchasing an estate there. 1 was given 
to understand that I should get a chamberlain’s key and some 
post of honor did I choose to remain, and I even wrote home 
to my brother Tom in England, hinting a change in my 
condition. 

At this juncture the town of Hamburg sent his Highness 
the Grand Duke (a pivpos of a commercial union which was 
pending between the two States) a singular present : no less 
than a certain number of barrels of oysters, which are con- 
sidered extreme luxuries in Germany, especially in the inland 
parts of the country, where they are almost unknown. 

In honor of the oysters and the new commercial treaty 
(which arrived in fourgons despatched for the purpose), his 
Highness announced a grand supper and ball, and invited all 
the quality of all the principalities round about. It was a 
splendid affair: the grand saloon brilliant with hundreds of 
uniforms and brilliant toilettes — not the least beautiful among 
them, I need not say, was Ottilia. 

At midnight the supper-rooms were thrown open, and we 
formed into little parties of six, each having a table, nobly 
served with plate, a lackey in attendance, and a gratifying ice- 
j:ail or two of champagne to egayer the supper. It was no 
small cost to serve five hundred people on silver, and the re- 
past was certainly a princely and magnificent one. 


FirZ-BOODLE 'S CONFESSIONS. 


~Q 

I had, of course, arranged with Mademoiselle de Schlippen* 
schlopp. Captains Frumpel and Fridelberger of the Duke’s 
Guard, Mesdames do Fuiterbrod and Bopp, formed our little 
party. 

The first course, of course, consisted of the oysters. Ottilia’s 
eyes gleamed with double brilliancy as the lackey opened them. 
There were nine apiece for ds — how well 1 recollect the 
number ! 

I never was much of an oyster-eater, nor can I relish. them 
in natiiraliluis as some do, but require a quantity of sauces, 
lemons, cayenne peppers, bread and butter, and so forth, to 
render them palatable. 

By tlie time I had made my preparations, Ottilia, the Cap- 
tains, and the two ladies, had wellnigh hnished theirs. In- 
deed Ottilia had gobbled up all hers, and there were only my 
nine left in the dish. 

I took one — it was bad. The scent of it was enough, — they 
were all bad. Ottilia had eaten nine bad oysters. 

I put down the horrid shell. Bier eyes glistened more and 
more ; she could not take them off the tray. 

“Dear Blerr George,” she said, “ 7u/7/ you give 7)ie your 
oysters t ” 

^ * * * * ik-'- 

# # * ^ ^ 

She had them all down — before — I could say — Jack — 
Robinson ! 

* # ^ * 

I left Kalbsbraten that night, and have never been there 


since. 


FITZ-BOODLE’S PROFESSIONS. 


BEING APPEALS TO THE UNEMPLOYED YOUNGER SONS OF 
THE NOBILITY. 


FIRST PROFESSION, 

The fair and honest proposition in which I offered to com* 
municate privately with parents and guardians, relative to two 
new and lucrative professions which 1 had discovered, has, i 
find frpin the publisher, elicited not one single inquiry from 
those personages, who I can’t but think are very little careful 
of their children’s welfare to allow such a chance to be thrown 
away. It is not for myself I speak, as my conscience proudly 
tells me ; for though I actually gave up Ascot in order to be in 
the way should any father of a family be inclined to treat with 
me regarding my discoveries, yet I am grieved, not on my own 
account, but on theirs, and for the wretched penny-wise policy 
\hat has held them back. 

That they must feel an interest in my announcement is un- 
questionable. Look at the way in which the public prints of 
all parties have noticed my appearance in the character of a 
literary man ! Putting aside my personal narrative, look at the 
’^ffer I made to the nation, — a choice of no less than two new 
professions ! Suppose I had invented as many new kinds of 
butcher’s-meat ; does anyone pretend that the world, tired as it 
is of the perpetual recurrence of beef, mutton, veal, cold beef, 
cold veal, cold mutton, hashed ditto, would not have jumped 
eagerly at the delightful intelligence that their old, stale, stupid 
meals were about to be varied at last? 

Of course people would have come forward. I should have 
had deputations from Mr. Gibletts and the fashionable butch- 

Cs86) 


FITZ-BOODLE B PROFESSIOA'S. 


5^7 

ers of this world ; petitions would have poured in from White- 
chapel salesmen ; the speculators panting to know the . dis- 
covery ; the cautious with stock in hand eager to bribe me to 
silence and prevent the certain depreciation of the goods which 
they already possessed. I should have dealt with them, not 
greedily or rapaciously, but on honest principles of fair barter. 
“Gentlemen,” 1 should have said, or rather, “Gents” — which 
affectionate diminutive is, 1 am given to understand, at present 
much in use among commercial persons — “ Gents, my re- 
searches, my genius, or my good fortune, have brought me to 
the valuable discovery about which you are come to treat. 
Will you purchase it outright, or will you give the discov- 
erer an honest share of the profits resulting from your specu- 
lation My position in the world puts me out of the power of 
executing the vast plan I have formed, but ’twill be a certain 
fortune to him who engages in it ; and why should not I, too, 
participate in that fortune } ” 

Such would have been my manner of dealing with the world, 
too, wi:h regard to my discovery of the new professions. Does 
not the world want new professions ? Are there not thousands 
of well-educated men panting, struggling, pushing, starving, in 
the old ones ? Grim tenants of chambers looking out for at- 
torneys who never come ? — wretched physicians practising the 
stale joke of being called out of church until people no longer 
think fit even to laugh or to pity ? Are there not hoary-headed 
midshipmen, antique ensigns growing mouldy upon fifty years’ 
half-pay ? Nay, are there not men who would pay anything to 
be employed rather than remain idle ? But such is the glut of 
professionals, the horrible cutthroat competition among them, 
that there is no chance for one in a thousand, be he ever so 
willing, or brave, or clever : in the great ocean of life he makes 
a few strokes, and puffs, and sputters, and sinks, and the in- 
numerable waves overwhelm him and he is heard of no more. 

Walking to my banker’s t’other day — and I pledge my 
sacred honor this story is true — I met a young fellow whom [ 
had known attache to an embassy abroad, a young man of toler- 
able parts, unwearied patience, with some fortune too, and, 
moreover, allied to a noble W'hig family, whose interest harl 
procured him his appointment to the legation at Krahwinkel, 
where I knew him. He remained for ten years a diplomatic 
character \ he was the workingman of the legation : 1:^ rent 
over the most diffuse translations of the German papers for the 
use of the Foreign Secretary : he signed passports with most 
astonishing ardor ; l:e exiled himself for ten long years in a 


THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


538 

wretched German towii, dancing attendance at court-balls and 
paying no end of money for uniforms. And for what ? At the 
end of the ten years — during which period of labor he never 
received a single shilling from the Government which emploved 
him (rascally spendthrift of a Government, zuif ), — he was 
offered the paid atiacheship to the court of H. M. the King of 
the Mosquito Islands, and refused that appointment a week 
before the Whig Ministry retired. Then he knew that tliere 
was no further chance for him, and incontinently quitted the 
diplomatic service forever, and I have no doubt will sell his 
uniform a bargain. The Government had him a bargain cer- 
tainly ; nor is he by any means the first person who has been 
sold at that price. 

Well, my worthy friend met me in the street and informed 
me of these facts with a smiling countenance, — which 1 thought 
a masterpiece of diplomacy. Fortune had been belaboring 
and kicking him for ten whole years, and here he was grinning 
in my face : could Monsieur de Talleyrand have acted better ? 
“ I liave given up diplomacy,’’ said Protocol, quite simply and 
good-humoredly, “ for between you and me, my good fellow, it’s 
a very slow profession ; sure perhaps, but slow. But though I 
gained no actual pecuniary remuneration in the service, I have 
learned all the languages in Europe, which will be invaluable 
to me in my new profession — the mercantile one — in which 
directly I looked out for a post I found one.” 

“ What ! and a good pay 1 ” said I. 

‘AVhy, no; that’s absurd, you know*. No young men, 
strangers to business, are paid much to speak of. Besides, I 
don't look to a paltry clerk's pay. Some day, wiien thoroughly 
acquainted with the business (I shall learn it in about seven 
} ears), I shall go into a good house with my capital and become 
junior partner.” 

And meanwhile } ” 

“ Meanw’hile I conduct the foreign correspondence of the 
eminent house of Jam, Ram, and Johnson ; and very heavy it 
is, I can tell you. From nine till six every day, except foreign 
post days, and then from nine till eleven. Dirty dark court to 
sit in ; snobs to talk to, — great change, as you may fancy.” 

“And you do all this for nothing.^” 

“ I do it to learn the business.” And so saying Protocol 
gave* me a knowing nod and w^ent his w'ay. 

Good heavens ! I thought, and is this a true story } Are 
there hundreds of young men in a similar situation at the 
present day, giving aw’ay the best years of their youth for the 


FIT/.-BOODLE 'S PROFESSIONS. 


589 

sake of a mere windy hope of something in old age, and dying 
before they come to the goal ? In seven years he hopes to have 
a business, and then to have the pleasure of risking his money ? 
He will be admitted into some -great house as a particular 
favor, and three months after the house will fail. Has it not 
happened to a thousand of our acquaintance ? I thought I 
would run after him and tell him about the new professions 
that I have invented. 

Oh ! ay ! those you wrote about in Fraser’s Magazine. 
Egad ! George, Necessity makes strange fellows of us all. 
Who would ever have thought of you spelling.^ much more 
writing } ” 

‘‘Never mind that. Will you, if I tell you of a new profes* 
sion that, with a little cleverness and instruction from me, you 
may bring to a most successful end — will you, I say, make me 
a fair return ? ” 

“ My dear creature,” replied young Protocol, “what non- 
sense you talk ! I saw that very humbug in the IMagazine. 
You say you have made a great discovery — very good ; you 
puff your discovery — very right ; you ask money for it — nothing 
can be more reasonable ; and then you say that you intend to 
make your discovery public in the next number of the Magazine. 
Do you think I will be such a fool as to give you money for a 
thing which I can have next month for nothing.? Good-by, 
George my boy ; the next discovery you make I’ll tell you how 
to get a better price foril.” And with this the fellow walked 
off, looking supremely knowing and clever. 

This tale of the person I have called Protocol is not told 
without a purpose, you may be sure. In the first place, it 
shows what are the reasons that nobody has made application 
to me concerning the new professions, namely, because I have 
passed my word to make them known in this Magazine, which 
persons may have for the purchasing, stealing, borrowing, or 
hiring, and, therefore, they will never think of applying per- 
sonally to me. And, secondly, his story proves also my asser- 
tion, viz. : that ail professions are most cruelly crowded at 
present, and that men will make the most absurd outlay and 
sacrifices for the smallest chance of success at some future 
period. Well, then, I will be a benefactor to my race, if I 
cannot be to one single member of it, whom I love better than 
most men. What I have discovered I will make known ; there 
shall be no shilly-shallying work here, no circumlocution, no 
bottle-conjuring business. But oh ! 1 wish for all our sakes 
that 1 had an opportunity to impart the secret to one or two 


THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


590 

persons only ; for, after all, but one or two can live in the 
manner I would suggest. And when the discovery is made 
known, I am sure ten thousand will try. The rascals ! I 
can see their brass-plates gleaming over scores of doors. Com- 
petition will ruin my professions, as it has all others. 

It must be premised that the two professions are intended 
for gentlemen, and gentlemen only — men of birth and education. 
No others could support the parts which they will be called 
upon to play. 

And, likewise, it must be honestly confessed that these 
professions have, to a certain degree, been exercised before. 
Do not cry out at this and say it is no discovery ! I say it is 
a discovery. It is a discovery if I show you — a gentleman — a 
profession which you may exercise without derogation, or loss 
of standing, with certain profit, nay, possibly with honor, and 
of which, until the reading of the present page, you never 
thought but as of a calling beneath your rank and quite below 
your reach. Sir, I do not mean to say that I create a profession. 
I cannot create gold ; but if, when discovered, I find tlie means 
of putting it in your pocket, do I or do I not deserve credit ? 

I see you sneer contemptuously when I mention to you the 
word Auctioneer. “ Is this all,’^ you say, “ that this fellow 
brags and prates about ? An auctioneer, forsooth ! he might 
as well have ‘ invented ’ chimney-sweeping ? 

No such thing. A little boy of seven, be he ever so low of 
birth, can do this as well as you. Do you suppose that little 
stolen Master Montague made a better sweeper than the lowest- 
bred chummy that yearly commemorates his release ? No, sir. 
And he might have been ever so much a genius or a gentleman, 
and not have been able to make his trade respectable. 

But all such trades as can be rendered decent the aristocracy 
has adopted one by one. At first they followed the profession 
of arms, flouting all others as unworthy, and thinking it un- 
gentlemanlike to know how to read or write. They did not go 
into the church in very early days, till the money to be got 
from the church was strong enough to tempt them. It is but 
of later years that they have condescended to go to the bar, 
and since the same time only that we see some of them follow- 
ing trades. I know an English lord’s son who is, or was, a 
wine-merchant (he may have been a bankrupt for what I know). 
As for bankers, several partners in banking-houses have four 
balls to their coronets, and I have no doubt that another sort 
of banking, viz. : that practised by gentlemen who lend small 
sums of money upon deposited securities, will be one day 


FITZ-BOODLE PROFESSIONS. 


591 


followed by the noble order, so that they may have four balls 
on their coronets and carriages, and three in front of their 
shops. 

Yes, the nobles come peoplewards as the people, on the 
other hand, rise and mingle with the nobles. With the plehs, 
of course, Fitz-Eoodle, in whose veins flows the blood of a 
thousand kings, can have nothing to do ; but, watching the 
progress of the world, ’tis impossible to deny that the good old 
days of our race are passed away. We want money still as 
much as ever we did ; but we cannot go down from our castles 
with horse and sword and waylay fat merchants — no, no, coun- 
founded new policemen and the assize-courts prevent th.at. 
Younger brothers cannot be pages to noble houses, as of old 
they were, serving gentle dames without disgrace, handing my 
lord’s rose-water to wash, or holding his stirrup as he mounted 
for the chase. A page, forsooth 1 A pretty figure would 
George Fitz-Boodle or any other man of fashion cut, in a jacket 
covered with sugar-loafed buttons, and handing in penny-post 
notes on a silver tray. The plehs have robbed us of that trade 
among others : nor, I confess, do 1 much grudge them their 
t?'OHvaille. Neither can we collect together a few scores of free 
lances, like honest Hugh Calverly in the Black Prince’s time, 
or brave Harry Butler of Wallenstein’s dragoons, and serve 
this or that prince, Peter the Cruel or Henry of Trastamare, 
Gustavus or the Emperor, at our leisure ; or, in default of 
service, fight and rob on our own gallant account, as the good 
gentlemen of old did. Alas ! no. In South America or Texas, 
perhaps, a man might have a chance that way ; but in the 
ancient world no man can fight except in the king’s service (and 
a mighty bad service that is too), and the lowest European 
sovereign, were it Baldomero Espartero himself, would think 
nothing of seizing the best-born condottiere that ever drew 
sword, and shooting him down like the vulgarest deserter. 

What, then, is to be done? We must discover fresh fields 
of enterprise — of peaceable and commercial enterprise in a 
peaceful and commercial age. I say, then, that the auctioneer’s 
pulpit has never yet been ascended by a scion of the aristoc- 
racy, and am prepared to prove that they might scale it, and 
do so with dignity and profit. 

For the auctioneer’s pulpit is just the peculiar place where 
a man of social refinement, of elegant wit, of polite perceptions, 
can bring his wit, his eloquence, his taste, and his experience of 
life, most delightfully into play. It is not like the bar, where 
the better and higher qualities of a man of fashion find no room 


592 


THE FITZ-BOODLE PA PEES. 


for exercise. In defending John Jorrocks in an action of tres- 
pass, for cutting clown a stick in Sam Snooks’s field, what^ 
powers of mind do you require ? — powers of mind, that is, ’ 
which ,^11-. Serjeant Snorter, a butcher’s son with a great loud 
voice, a sizar at Cambridge, a wrangler, and so forth, does not 
possess as well as yourself ? Snorter has never been in decent 
society in liis life. He thinks the bar-mess the most fashion- 
able assemblage in Europe, and the jokes of “ gl-and day ’’ the 
nc plits ultra of wit. Snorter lives near Russell Square, eats 
beef and Yorkshire-pudding, is a judge of port-wine, is in all 
social respects your inferior. Well, it is ten to one but in the 
case of Snooks v. Jorrocks, before mentioned, he will be a 
better advocate than you ; he knows the law of the case entirely, 
and better probably than you. He can speak long, loud, to the 
point, grammatically — more grammatically than you, no doubt, 
will condescend to do. In the case of Snooks v. jorrocks l.e 
is all that can be desired. And so about dry disputes, respect- 
ing real property, he knows the law ; and, beyond this, has no 
more need to be a gentleman than my body-servant has — who, 
by the way, from constant intercourse with the best society, is 
almost a gentleman. Rut this is apart from the* question. 

Now, in the matter of auctioneering, this, I apprehend, is 
not the case, and I assert that a high-bred gentleman, with 
good powers of mind and speech, must, in such a profession, 
make a fortune. I do not mean in all auctioneering matters. 

I do not mean that such a person should be called upon to sell 
the good-will of a public-house, or discourse about the value of 
the beer-barrels, or bars with pewter fittings, or the beauty of a 
trade doing a stroke of so many hogsheads a week. I do not 
ask a gentleman to go down and sell pigs, ploughs, and cart- 
horses, at Stoke Pogis ; or to enlarge at rhe Auction-Rooms, 
Wapping, upon the beauty of the Lively Sally ” schooner. 
These articles of commerce or use can be better appreciated by 
persons in a different rank of life to his. 

But there are a thousand cases in which a gentleman' only 
can do justice to the sale of objects which the necessity or 
convenience of the genteel world may require to change hands. 
All articles properly called of taste should be put under his 
charge. Pictures, — he is a travelled man, has seen and judged 
the best galleries of Europe, and can speak of them as a com- 
mon person cannot. For, mark you, you must have the con- 
fidence of your society, you must be able to be familiar witlr 
them, to plant a happy mot in a graceful manner, to appeal to 
my lord or the duchess in such a modest, easy, pleasant way aij 


PROrE 


593 


I'f IZ~Ih 


j. /; •-)’ 


RRIO^S. 


tiiat iier grace slioiilcl not be Ivart by your allusion to her — nay, 
amused (like the rest of the company) by the manner in which 
it was done. 

What is more disgusting than the familiarity of a snob ? 
What more loathsome than the swaggering quackery of some 
present holders of the hammer } There v/as a late sale, for 
instance, which made some noise in the world (1 mean the late 
Lord Gimcrack's, at Bilberry Hill). Ah ! what an opportunity 
was lost there ! I declare solemnly that I believe, but for the 
absurd quackery and braggadocio of the advertisements, much 
more money would have been bid ; people were kept away by 
the vulgar trumpeting of the auctioneer, and could not help 
thinking the things were worthless that were so outrageously 
lauded. 

They say that sort of Bartholomew-fair advocacy (in which 
people are invited to an entertainment by the medium of a 
hoarse yelling beef-eater, twenty-four drums, and a jack-pudding 
turning head over heels) is absolutely necessary to excite the 
public attention. What an error! I say that the refined indi- 
vidual so accosted is more likely to close his ears, and, sliud- 
dering, run away from the booth. Poor Horace Waddlepoodle ! 
to think that thy gentle accumulation of bric-a-brac should have 
passed away in such a manner! by means of a man who brings 
down a butterfly with a blunderbuss, and talks of a pin’s head 
through a speaking-trumpet ! Why, the auctioneer’s very voice 
was enough to crack the Sevres porcelain and blow the lace 
into annihilation. Let it be remembered that I speak of the 
gentleman in his public character merely, meaning to insinuate 
nothing more than I would by stating that Lord Brougham 
speaks with a northern accent, or that the voice of Mr. Sheil 
is sometimes unpleasantly shrill. 

Now the character I have , formed to myself of a great 
auctioneer is this. I fancy him a man of first-rate and irre- 
proachable birth and fashion. I fancy his person so agreeable 
that it must be a pleasure for ladies to behold and tailors to 
dress it. As a private man he must move in the very best 
societ}^ which will flock round his pulpit when he mounts it in 
his public calling. It will be a privilege for vulgar people to 
attend the hall where he lectures ; and they will consider it an 
honor to be allowed to pay their money for articles the value 
of which is stamped by his high recommendation. Nor can 
such a person be a mere fribble ; nor can any loose hanger-on 
of fashion imagine he may assume the character. The gentle- 
man auctioneer must be an artist above all, adoring his profes- 
/ 


594 


THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


sion ; and adoring it, what must he not know? He must have 
a good knowledge of the history and language of all nations ; 
not the knowledge of the mere critical scholar, but of the 
lively and elegant man of the world. He will not commit the 
gross blunders of pronunciation that untravelled Englishmen 
per} e rate ; he will not degrade his subject by coarse eulogy, 
or sicken his audience with vulgar banter. He will know 
where to apply praise and wit properly ; he will have the tact 
only acquired in good society, and know where a joke is in 
place, and how far a compliment may go. He will not out- 
rageously and indiscriminately laud all objects committed to 
his charge, for he knows the value of praise ; that diamonds, 
could we have them by the bushel, would be used as coals ; 
that, above all, he has a character of sincerity to support ; that 
he is not merely the advocate of the person who employs him, 
but that the public is his client too, who honors him and con- 
fides in him. Ask him to sell a copy of Raffaelle for an 
original ; a trumpery modern Brussels counterfeit for real old 
Mechlin ; some common French forged crockery for the old 
delightful, delicate, Dresden china; and he will quit you with 
scorn, or order his servant to show you the door of his study. 

Study, by the way, — no, study ” is a vulgar word : every 
word is vulgar which a man uses to give the world an exagger- 
ated notion of himself or his condition. When the wretched 
bagman, brought up to give evidence before Judge Coltman, 
was asked what his trade was, and replied that “ he represented 
the house of Dobson and Hobson,’^ he showed himself lo be a 
vulgar, mean-souled wretch, and was most properly reprimanded 
by his lordship. To be a bagman is to be humble, but not of 
necessity vulgar. Pomposity is vulgar, to ape a higher rank 
than your own is vulgar, for an ensign of militia to call himself 
captain is vulgar, or for a bagman to style himself the “ repre- 
sentative '' of Dobson and Hobson. The honest auctioneer, 
then, will not call his room his study ; but his “ private room,^^ 
or his office, or whatever may be the phrase commonly used 
among auctioneers. 

He will not for the same reason call himself (as once in a 
momentary feeling of pride and enthusiasm for the profession 
I thought he should) — he will not call himself an “ advocate,” 
but an auctioneer. There is no need to attempt to awe people 
by big titles : let each man bear his own name without shame. 
And a very gentlemanlike and agreeable, though exceptional 
position (for it is clear that there cannot be more than two of 
the class,) may the auctioneer occupy. 


FITZ-BOODLE PROFESSIONS, 


595 


He must not sacrifice his honesty, then, either for his own 
sake or his clients’, in any way, nor tell fibs about himself or 
them. He is by no means called upon to draw the long bow 
in their behalf ; all that his office obliges him to do — and let us 
hope his disposition will lead him to do it also — is to take a 
favorable, kindly, philanthropic view of the world ; to say 
what can fairly be said by a good-natured and ingenious man 
in praise of any article for which he is desirous to awaken public 
sympathy. And how readily and pleasantly may this be done ! 
I will take upon myself, for instance, to write an eulogium upon 
So-and-So’s last novel, which shall be every word of. it true ; 
and which work, though to some discontented spirits it might 
appear dull, may be shown to be ^really amusing and instruct- 
ive, — nay, /s amusing and instructive, — to those who have the 
art of discovering where those precious qualities lie. 

An auctioneer should have the organ of truth large ; of im- 
agination and comparison, considerable ; of wit, great ; of be- 
nevolence, excessively large. 

And how happy might such a man be, and cause others to 
be ! He should go through the world laughing, merry, observ- 
ant, kind hearted. He should love everything in the world, 
because his profession regards everything. With books of 
lighter literature (for I do not recommend the genteel auc- 
tioneer to meddle with heavy antiquarian and philological 
works) he should be elegantly conversant, being able to give a 
neat history of the author, a pretty sparkling kind criticism of 
the work, and an appropriate eulogium upon the binding, which 
would make those people read who never read before ; or 
buy at least, which is his first consideration. Of pictures we 
have already spoken. Of china, of jewelry, of gold-headed 
canes, valuable arms, picturesque antiquities, with what elo- 
quent entrainement might he not speak ! He feels every one 
of these things in his heart. He has all the tastes of the 
fashionable world. Dr. Meyrick cannot be more enthusiastic 
about an old suit of armor than he ; Sir Harris Nicolas not 
more eloquent regarding the gallant times in which it was 
worn, and the brave histories connected with it. He takes up 
a pearl necklace with as much delight as any beauty who was 
sighing to wear it round her own snowy throat, and hugs a 
china monster with as much joy as the oldest duchess could 
do. Nor must he affect these things ; he must feel them. He 
is a glass in which all the tastes of fashion are reflected. He 
must be every one of the characters to whom he addresses him- 
self — a genteel Goethe or Shakspeare, a fashionable world- 
spirit. 


THE FITZ-BOODLE FABERS. 


59 ^^ 


How can a man be all this and not be a gentleman ^ and 
not have had an education in the midst of the best company — 
an insight into the most delicate feelings, and wants, and 
usages ? The pulpit oratory of such a man would be invalua- 
ble ; people would liock to listen to him from far and near. 
Pie might out of a single teacup cause streams of world- 
philosophy to flow, which would be drunk in by grateful 
thousands ; and draw out of an old pincushion points of wit, 
morals, and experience, that would make a nation wise. 

Look round, examine the annals of auctions, as Mr. 
Robins remarks, and (with every respect for him and his 
brethren) say, is there in the profession such a man ? Do we 
want such a man ? Is such ^ man likely or not likely to make 
an immense fortune } Can we get such a man except out 
of the very best societ}^, and among the most favored there ? 

Everybody answers “No ! ’’ I knew you would answer no. 
And now, gentlemen who have laughed at my pretension to dis- 
cover a profession, say, have I not ? I have laid my Anger upon 
the spot- where the social deficit exists. I have showed that we 
labor under a wantj and when the world wants, do we not 
know that a man will step forth to fill the vacant space that 
Fate has left for him } Pass we now to the — 


SECOND PROFESSION. 

This profession, too, is a great, lofty, and exceptional one, 
and discovered by me considering these things, and deeply 
musing upon the necessities of society. Nor let honorable 
gentlemen imagine that I am enabled to offer them in this pro- 
fession, more than any other, a promise of what is called future 
glory, deathless fame, and so forth. All that I say is, that 1 
can put young men in the way of making a comfortable liveli- 
hood, ami leaving behind them, not a name, but what is better, 
a decent maintenance to their children. Pdtz-Boodle is as good 
a name as any in England. General Fitz-Boodle, who, in Marl- 
borough’s time, and in conjunction with the famous Van Slaap, 
beat the Ph'ench in the famous action of Vischzouchee, near 
Mardyk, m Holland, on the 14th of February, 1709, is promised 
an immortality upon his tomb in Westminster Abbey ; but he 
died of apoplexy, deucedly in debt, two years afterwards : and 
what after tiiat is the use of a name ? 

No, no ; the age of chivalry is past, l ake the twenty-four 
first men who come into the club, and ask who they are, and 


Frrz-BOODLE'S PROFESSIONS. 


597 


how they made their money? There's Woolsey-Sackville ■ his 
father was Lord Chancellor, and sat on the woolsack, whence 
he took his title ; his grandfather dealt in coal-sacks, and not 
in wool-sacks, — small coal-sacks, dribbling out little supplies of 
black diamonds to the poor. Yonder comes Frank Leveson, 
in a huge broad-brimmed hat, his shirt-cuffs turned up to LiS 
elbows. Leveson is as gentlemanly a fellow as the world con- 
tains, and if he has a fault, is perhaps too linikin. Well, you 
fancy him related to the Sutherland family ; nor, indeed, does 
honest Frank deny it; but cntrc nous., my good sir, his father 
was an attorney, and his grandfather a bailiff in Chancery Lane, 
bearing a name still older than that of Leveson, namely. Levy. 
So it is that this confounded equality grows and grows, and ha^ 
laid the good old nobility by the heels. Look at that venerable 
Sir Charles Kitely, of Kitely Park : he is interested about the 
Ashantees, and is just come from Exeter Hall. Kitely dis- 
counted bills in the City in the year 1787, and gained his 
baronetcy by a loan to the French princes. All these points of 
history are perfectly well known ; and do you fancy the world 
cares ? Psha ! Profession is no disgrace to a man : be what 
you like, provided you succeed. If Mr. Fauntleroy could come 
to life with a million of money, you and I would dine with him : 
you know we would; for why should we be better than our 
neighbors ? 

Put, then, out of your head the idea that this or that pro- 
fession is unworthy of you : take any that may bring you profit, 
and thank him that puts you in the way of being rich. 

The profession I would urge (upon a person duly qualified 
to undertake it) has, I confess, at the first glance, something 
ridiculous about it ; and will not appear to young ladies so 
romantic as the calling of a gallant soldier, blazing with glory, 
gold lace, and vermilion coats ; or a dear delightful clergyman, 
with a sweet blue eye, and a pocket-handkerchief scented charm- 
ingly with lavender-water. The profession I allude to 7£v7/, I 
own, be to young women disagreeable, to sober men trivial, to 
great stupid moralists unworthy. 

But mark my w^ords for it, that in the religious world (I have 
once or twice, by mistake no doubt, had the honor of dining in 
“ serious ” houses, and can vouch for the fact that the dinners 
there are of excellent quality) — in the serious Vvorld, in the 
great mercantile world, among the legal community (notorious 
feeders), in every house in towm (except some half-dozen which 
can afford to do without such aid), the man I propose might 
speedily render himself indispensable. 


59 ^ 


THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERB, 


Does the reader now begin to take ? Have I hinted enough 
for him that he may see with eagle glance the immense beauty 
of the profession I am about to unfold to him ? We have all 
seen Gunter and Chevet; Fregoso, on the Puerta del Sol (a 
relation of the ex-Minister Calomarde), is a good purveyor 
enough for the benighted olla-eaters of Madrid ; nor have I any 
fault to find with Guimard, a Frenchman, who has lately set up 
in the Toledo, at Naples, where he furnishes people with decent 
food. It has given me pleasure, too, in walking about London 
— in the Strand, in Oxford Street, and elsewhere, to see four- 
nisseurs and comestible merchants newly set up. Messrs. 
Morell have excellent articles in their w^arehouses ; Fortnum 
and Mason are known to most of my readers. 

But what is not known, what is wanted, what is languished 
for in England is a di?mer-masfer , — a gentleman wdio is not a 
provider of meat or wane, like the parties before named, w^ho 
can have no earthly interest in the price of truffied turkeys or 
dry champagne beyond that legitimate interest which he may 
feel for his client, and which leads him to see that the latter is 
not cheated by his tradesmen. For the dinner-giver is almost 
naturally an ignorant man. Flow in mercy’s name can Mr. 
Serjeant Snorter, who is all day at Westminster, or in chambers, 
know possibly the mysteries, the delicacy, of dinner-giving 
How can Alderman Pogson know anything beyond the fact 
that venison is good with currant-jelly, and that he likes lots of 
green fat with his turtle Snorter know^s law, Pogson is 
acquainted with the state of the tallow-market ; but what should 
he know of eating, like you and me, who have given up our 
time to it 1 (I say 7ne only familiarly, for I have only reached 
so far in the science as to know^ that I know nothing.) But 
men there are, gifted individuals, w^ho have spent years of deep 
thought — not merely intervals of labor, but hours of study every 
day — over the gormandizing science, — who, like alchemists, 
have let their fortunes go, guinea by guinea, into the all-devour- 
ing pot, — who, ruined as they sometimes are, never get a guinea 
by chance but they wdll have a plate of pease in May with it, 
or a little feast of ortolans, or a piece of Glo’ster salmon, or 
one more flask from their favorite claret-bin. 

It is not the ruined gastronomist that I would advise a per- 
son to select as his table-jiiaster ; for the opportunities of pecula- 
tion w^ould be too great in a position of such confidence — such 
complete abandonment of one man to another. A ruined man 
W'ould be making bargains with the tradesmen. They would 
offer to cash bills for him, or send him opportune presents of 


FITZ-BOODLE 'S PROFESSIONS. 


599 


wine, which he could convert into money, or bribe him in one 
way or another. Let this be done, and the profession of table- 
master is ruined. Snorter and Pogson may almost as well 
order their own dinners, as be at the mercy of a ‘‘ gastronomic 
agent ’’ whose faith is not beyond all question. 

A vulgar mind, in reply to these remarks regarding the 
gastronomic ignorance of Snorter and Pogson, might say, 
“ Prue, these gentlemen know nothing of household economy, 
being occupied with other more important business elsewhere. 
But what are their wives about ? Lady Pogson in Harley Street 
has nothing earthly to do but to mind her poodle, and her man- 
tua-maker’s and housekeeper’s bills. Mrs. Snorter in Bedford 
Place, when she has taken her drive in the Park with the young 
ladies, may surely have time to attend to her husband’s guests and 
preside over the preparations of his kitchen, as she does wor- 
thily at his hospitable mahogany.” To this I answer, that a man 
who expects a woman to understand the philosophy of dinner- 
giving, shows the strongest evidence of a low mind. He is 
unjust towards that lovely and delicate creature, woman, to 
suppose that she heartily understands and cares for what she 
eats and drinks. No ; taken as a rule, women have no real 
appetites. They are children in the gormandizing way ; loving 
sugar, sops, tarts, trifles, apricot-creams, and such gewgaws. 
They would take a sip of Malmsey, and would drink currant- 
wine just as happily, if that accursed liquor was presented to 
them by the butler. Did you ever know a woman who could 
lay her fair hand upon her gentle heart and say on her con- 
science that she preferred dry sillery to sparkling champagne ? 
Such a phenomenon does not exist. They are not made for 
eating and drinking ; or, if they make a pretence to it, become 
downright odious. Nor can they, I am sure, witness the prep- 
arations of a really great repast without a certain jealousy. 
They grudge spending money (ask guards, coachmen, inn- 
waiters, whether this be not the case). They will give their all, 
heaven bless them ! to serve a son, a grandson, or a dear rela- 
tive, but they have not the heart to pay for small things magnif- 
icently. They are jealous of good dinners, and no wonder. I 
have shown in a former discourse how they are jealous of smo- 
king, and other personal enjoyments of the male. I say, then, 
that Lady Pogson or Mrs. Snorter can never conduct their hus- 
bands’ table properly. Fancy either of them consenting to 
allow a calf to be stewed down into gravy for one dish, or a 
dozen hares to be sacrificed to a single puree of game, or the 
best Madeira to be used for a sauce, or a half a dozen cham- 


THE FITZ~BOODLE TAPERS. 


Tjo 

pagne lo boil a ham in. They will be for bringing a bottle ot 
Marsala in place of the old particular, or for having the ham 
cooked in water. But of these matters — of kitchen philosophy 
— I liave iio practical or theoretic knowledge ; and must beg 
pardon if, only understanding the goodness of a dish when 
cooked, 1 may have unconsciously made some blunder regard- 
ing the preparation. 

Let it, then, be set down as an axiom, without further 
trouble of demonstration, that a woman is a bad dinner-caterer ; 
either too great and simple for it, or too mean — I don’t know 
which it is ; and gentlemen, according as they admire or con- 
temn the sex, may settle that matter their own way. In brief, 
the mental constitution of lovely woman is such that she can- 
not give a great dinner. It must be done by man. It can’t 
be done by an ordinary man, because he does not understand 
it. Vain fool ! and he sends off to the pastry-cook in Great 
Russell Street or Baker Street, he lays on a couple of extra 
waiters (green-grocers in the neighborhood), lie. makes a great 
pother with his butler in the cellar, and fancies he has done the 
business. 

Bon Dlcii ! Who has not been at those dinners ? — those 
monstrous exhibitions of the pastry-cook’s art Who does not 
know thiOse made dishes with the universal sauce to each : 
fricandeaux, sweetbreads, damp dumpy cutlets, cxc., seasoned 
with the compound of grease, onions, bad port-wine, cayenne 
pepper, curry-powder (Warren’s blacking, for what I know, but 
the taste is always the same) — there they lie in the old corner 
dishes, the poor wiry Moselle and sparkling Burgundy in the 
ice-coolers, and the old story of white and brown soup, turbot, 
little smelts, boiled turkey, saddle-of-mutton, and so forth ? 
“ Try a little of that fricandeau,” says Mrs. Snorter, with a kind 
smile. ‘‘ You’ll find it, I think, very nice.” Be sure it has 
come in a green tray from Great Russell Street. “ Mr. Titz- 
Boodle, you liave been in Germany,” cries Snorter, knowingly; 
‘‘ taste the hock, and tell me wliat you tliink of 

How should lie know better, poor benighted creature ; or 
she, dear good soul that slie is } if they would ha\ e a leg of 
mutton and an apple-pudding, and a glass of sherry and port 
(or simple brandy-and-watcr called by its own name) after din- 
ner, all would be. very well ; but they must sliine, lliey must 
dine as their neighbors. There is no difference in the style of 
dinners in London ; people wdth five hundred a year treat you 
exactly as those of hve thousand. They ze/// have their Mo- 
selle or hock, their fatal side-dishes brought in the green trays 
from the pastry-cook’s. 


FITZ-BOODLE^S PROFESSIONS. 6oi 

Well, there is no harm done ; not as regards the dinner- 
givers at least, though the dinner-eaters may have to suffer 
somewhat ; it only shows that the former are hospitably inclined, 
and wish to do the very best in their power, — good honest 
fellows! If they do wrong, how can they help it? they know 
no better. 

And now, is it not as clear as the sun at noon-day, that a want 
exists in London for a superintendent of the table — a gastro- 
nomic agent — a dinner-master, as I have called Idm before ? 
A man of such a profession would be a metropolitan benefit ; 
hundreds of thousands of people of the respectable sort, people 
in white waistcoats, would thank him daity. Calculate how 
many dinners are given in the City of London, and calculate 
the numbers of benedictions that the Agency ’’ might win. 

And as no doubt the observant man of the world has 
remarked that the freeborn Englishman of the respectable class 
is, of all others, the most slavish and truckling to a lord ; that 
there is no fly-blown peer but he is pleased to have him at his 
table, proud beyond measure to call him by his surname (with- 
out the lordly prefix) ; and that those lords whom he does not 
know, he yet (the freeborn Englishman) takes care to have 
their pedigrees and ages by heart from his world-bible, the 
‘‘ Peerage : ’’ as this is an indisputable fact, and as it is in this 
particular class of Britons that our agent must look to find 
clients, I need not say it is necessary that the agent should be 
as high-born as possible, and that he should be able to tack, 
if possible, an honorable or some other handle to his respect- 
able name. He must have it on his professional card — 


(frcrgt (iSormanb' (©obbkton, 

Apician Chambers, Pall MalL 


Or, 


Sir ^xtgustiTS €nxbn Cramkg, 

Amphit7yonic Cowtcil Office, Swallow Street. 
: 

or, in some such neat way, Gothic letters on a large handsome 
crockeryxvare card, with possibly a gilt coat-of-arms and sup- 


THE EITZ-HOODLE TATEES. 


60:! 

porters, or the blood-red hand of baronetcy duly displayed. 
Depend on it plenty of ^-uineas will fall in it, and that Gobble- 
ton’s supporters will support him comfortably enough. 

For this profession is not like that of the auctioneer, w'hich 
I take to be a far more noble one, because more varied and 
more truthful ; but in the Agency case, a little humbug at least 
is necessary. A man cannot be a successful agent by the mere 
force of his simple merit or genius in eating and drinking. lie 
must of necessity impose upon the vulgar to a certain degree. 
He must be of that rank which will lead them naturally to 
respect him, otherwise they might be led to jeer at his profes- 
sion ; but let a noble exercise it, and bless your soul, all the 
Court Guide ” is dumb ! 

He will then give out in a manly and somewhat pompous 
address what has before been mentioned, namely, that he has 
.seen the fatal way in which the hospitality of England has been 
perverted- hitherto, accapar&d by a few cooks whth green trays. 
(He must use a good deal of French in his language, for that 
is considered very gentlemanlike by vulgar people.) He wall 
take a set of chambers in Carlton Gardens, which wall be richly 
though severely furnished, and the door of which wall be opened 
by a French valet (he 7nust be a Frenchman, remember), who 
wall say, on letting Mr. Snorter or Sir Benjamin Pogson in, 
that Milor is at liome.” Pogson will then be shown into a 
library furnished with massive book-cases, containing all the 
works on cookery and wanes (the titles of them) in all the known 
languages in the w^orld. Any books, of course, wall do, as you 
will have them handsomely bound, and keep them under plate- 
glass. On a side-table wall be little sample-bottles of wines, 
a few truffles on a white porcelain saucer, a prodigious straw/- 
berry or two, perhaps, at the time when such fruit costs much 
money. On the library wall be busts marked Ude, Careme, 
Bechamel, in marble (never mind what heads, of course) ; and, 
perhaps, on the clock should be a figure of the Prince of 
Conde’s cook killing himself because the fish had not arrived 
in time : there may be a wreath of vnmofidlcs on the figure to 
give it a more decidedly Frenchified air. The walls will be of 
a dark rich paper, hung round with neat gilt frames, containing 
plans of menus of various great dinners, those of Cambaebres, 
Napoleon, Louis XIV., Louis XVIII., Heliogabalus if you like, 
each signed by the respective cook. 

After the stranger has looked about him at these things, 
which he does not understand in the least, especially the truf- 
fles, which look like dirty potatoes, you will make your appear- 


FIT/.-BOODLE 'S FKUFKSSIOXS. 


603 

ance, dressed in a dark dress, witli one liandsome enormous 
gold chain, and one large diamond ring ; a gold snuff-box, ot 
course, which you will thrust into the visitor’s paw before say- 
ing a word. You will be yourself a portly grave man, with 
your hair a little bald and gray. In fact, in this, as in all 
other professions, you had best try to look as like Canning as 
you can. 

When Pogson has done sneezing with the snuff, you will 
say to him, Take a fautcuil. 1 have the honor of addressing 
Sir Benjamin Pogson, I believe ? ” And then you will explain 
to him your system. 

This, of course, must vary with every person you address. 
But let us lay down a few of the heads of a plan which may be 
useful, or may be modified infinitely, or may be cast aside 
altogether, just as circumstances dictate. After all / am not 
going to turn gastronomic aj^nt, and speak only for the benefit 
perhaps of the very person who is reading this ; — 

“synopsis of TliE GASTRONOMIC AGENCY OF THE HONORABLE 
GEORGE GOBBLETON. 

“The Gastronomic Agent having traversed Europe, and 
dined with the best society of the world, has been led naturally, 
as a patriot, to turn his thoughts homeward, and cannot but 
deplore the lamentable ignorance regarding gastronomy dis- 
played in a country for which Nature has done almost every- 
tliing. 

“ But it is ever singularly thus. Inherent ignorance belongs 
to man ; and The Agent, in his Continental travels, has always 
remarked, that the countries most fertile in themselves were 
invariably worse tilled than those more barren. The Italians 
and the Spaniards leave their fields to Nature, as we leave our 
vegetables, fish, and meat. And, heavens ! what richness do 
v/e fling away, — what dormant qualities in our dishes do we 
disregard, — wfiiat glorious gastronomic crops (if The Agent 
may be permitted the expression) — what glorious gastronomic 
crops do w^e sacrifice, allowing our goodly meats and fishes to 
lie fallow ! ‘ Chance,’ it is said by an ingenious historian, who, 

having been long a secretary in the East India House, must 
certainly have had access to the best information upon Eastern 
matters, — ‘ Chance,’ it is said by Mr. Charles Lamb, ‘ which 
burnt down a Chinaman’s house, with a litter of sucking-pigs 
that were unable to escape from the interior, discovered to the 
world the excellence of roast pig.* Gunpowder, w^e know, w^as 

39 


THE FJTZ-BOODLE PAPERS. 


604 

invented by a similar fortuity/’ [The reader will observe that 
my style in the supposed character of a Gastronomic Agent is 
purposely pompous and loud.] ‘‘ So, His said, was printing, — 
so glass. — We should have drunk our wine poisoned with the 
villanous odor of the borachio, had not some Eastern mer- 
chants, lighting their fires in the Desert, marked the strange 
composition which now glitters on our sideboards, and holds 
the costly produce of our vines. 

We have spoken of the natural riches of a country. Let 
the reader think but for one moment of the gastronomic wealth 
of our country of England, and he will be lost in thankful 
amazement as he watches the astonishing riches poured out 
upon us from Nature’s bounteous cornucopia ! Look at our 
fisheries ! — the trout and salmon tossing in our brawling 
streams ; the white and full-breasted turbot struggling in the 
mariner’s net ; the purple lobsterTured by hopes of greed into 
his basket-prison, which he quits only for the red ordeal of the 
pot. Look at whitebait, great heavens ! — look at whitebait, 
and a thousand frisking, gl^tering, silvery things besides, which 
the nymphs of our native streams bear kindly to the deities of 
our kitchens — our kitchens such as they are. 

And though it may be said that other countries produce 
the freckle-backed salmon and the dark broad-shouldered tur- 
bot ; though trout frequent many a stream besides those of 
England, and lobsters sprawl on other sands than ours ; yet, 
let it be remembered, that our native country possesses these 
altogether, while other lands only know them separately ; that, 
above all, whitebait is peculiarly our country’s — our city’s own 1 
Blessir\gs and eternal praises be on it, and, of course, on brown 
bread and butter ! And the Briton should further remember, 
with honest pride and thankfulness, the situation of his capital, 
of London : the lordly turtle floats from the sea into the stream, 
and from the stream to the city ; the rapid fleets of all the 
world se donfient ixndezvous in the clocks of our silvery Thames ; 
the produce of our coasts and provincial cities, east and west, 
is borne to us on the swift lines of lightning railroads. In a 
word — and no man but one who, like The Agent, has travelled 
Europe over, can appreciate the gift — there is no city on earth’s 
surface so well supplied with fish as London ! 

“ With respect to our meats, all praise is supererogatory. 
Ask the wretched hunter of chevreuil.^ the poor devourer of 
rehbratm, what they think of the noble English haunch, that, 
after bounding in the Park of Knole or Windsor, exposes its 
magnificent flank upon some broad silver platter at our tables ? 


FirZ-BOODLE'S PROFESSIONS, 605 

It is enough to say of foreign venison, that they are obliged to 
lard it. Away ! ours is the palm of roast ; whether of the crisp 
mutton that crops the thymy herbage of our downs, or the 
noble ox who revels on lush Althorpian oil-cakes. What game 
is like to ours ? Mans excels us in poultry, ’tis true ; but ’tis 
only in merry P^ngland that the partridge has a flavor, that the 
turkey can almost se passer de truffes,^ that the jolly juicy goose 
can be eaten as he deserves. 

Our vegetables, moreover, surpass all comment ; Art (by 
the means of glass) has wrung fruit out of the bosom of Nature, 
such as she grants to no other clime. And if we have no 
vineyards on our hills, we have gold to purchase their best 
produce. Nature, and enterprise that masters Nature, have 
done everything for our land. 

But, with all these prodigious riches in our power, is it 
not painful to reflect how absurdly we employ them Can we 
say that we are in the habit of dining well ? Alas ! no ! and 
The Agent, roaming o’er foreign lands, and seeing how, with small 
means and great ingenuity and perseverance, great ends were 
effected, comes back sadly to his own country, whose wealth he 
sees absurdly wasted, whose energies are misdirected, and 
whose vast capabilities are allowed to lie idle. * * * ’> 

[Here should follow what I have only hinted at previously, a 
vivid and terrible picture of the degradation of our table.] 
* # * Qj-j^ fQj- ^ master spirit, to give an impetus to the 

land, to see its great power directed in the right way, and its 
wealth not squandered or hidden, but nobly put out to interest 
and spent ! 

“ The Agent dares not hope to win that proud station — to 
be the destroyer of a barbarous system wallowing in abusive 
prodigality — to become a dietetic reformer — the Luther of the 
table. 

“ But convinced of the wrongs which exist, he will do his 
humble endeavor to set them right, and to those who know that 
they are ignorant (and this is a vast step to knowledge) he 
offers his counsels, his active co-operation, his frank and kindly 
sympathy. The Agent’s qualiflcations are these : — 

“ I. He is of one of the best families in England ; and has 
in himself, or through his ancestors, been accustomed to good 
living for centuries. In the reign of Henry V., his maternal 
great-great-grandfather, Roger De Gobylton ” \the name may be 
varied,, of course,, or the king’s reign,, or the dish invented\ was 
the first who discovered the method of roasting a peacock 
whole, with his tail-feathers displayed ; and the dish was served 


6o6 


THE EJTZ^BOODLE PAPERS. 


to the two kings at Rouen. Sir Walter Cramley, in Elizabeth’s 
reign, produced before her Majesty, when at Killingw^orth 
Castle, mackerel with the famous gooseberry sauce, &c. 

“2. He has, through life, devoted himself to no other study 
than that of the table : and has visited to that end the courts 
of all the monarchs of Europe : taking the receipts of the cooks, 
with whom he lives on terms of intimate friendship, often at 
enormous expense to himself. 

3. He has the same acquaintance with all the vintages of the 
Continent ; havin: passed the autumn of 18 1 1 (the comet year) 
on the great Weinberg of Johannisberg ; being employed sim- 
ilarly at Bordeaux, in 1834 ; at Oporto, in 1820 ; and at Xeres 
de la Frontera, wdth his excellent friends. Duff, Gordon and 
Co., the year after. He travelled to India and back in com- 
pany wnth fourteen pipes of Madeira (on board of the ‘ Samuel 
Snob ’ East Indiaman, Captain Scuttler), and spent the vin- 
tage season in the island, with unlimited pow'ers of observation 
granted to him by the great houses there. 

“ 4. He has attended Mr. Groves of Charing Cross, and 
Mr. Giblett of Bond Street, in a course of purchases of fish and 
meat ; and is able at a glance to recognize the age of mutton, 
the primeness of beef, the firmness and freshness of fish of all 
kinds. 

“ 5. He has visited the parks, the grouse-manors, and the 
principal gardens of England, in a similar professional point of 
view.’^ 

The Agent then, through his subordinates, engages to pro- 
vide gentlemen who are about to give dinner-parties — 

“ I. With cooks to dress the dinners ; a list of which gen- 
tlemen he has by him, and will recommend none who are not 
worthy of the strictest confidence. 

“ 2. With a menu for the table, according to the price which 
the Amphitryon chooses to incur. 

“ 3. He will, through correspondence with the various 
fournisseurs of the metropolis, provide them with viands, fruit, 
wine, &c., sending to Paris, if need be, where he has a regular 
correspondence with Messrs. Chevet. 

‘‘ 4. He has a list of dexterous table-w'aiters (all answering 
to name of John for fear of mistakes, the butler’s name to be 
settled according to pleasure), and w^ould strongly recommend 
that the servants of the house should be locked in the back 
kitchen or servants’ hall during the time the dinner takes 
place. 


FITZ-BOODLE PROFESSIONS. 607 

5. He will receive and examine all the accounts of the 
fournisseurs, — of course pledging his honor as a gentleman not 
to receive one shilling of paltry gratification from the trades- 
men he employs, but to see the bills are more moderate, and 
their goods of better quality than they would provide to any 
of less experience than himself. 

6. His fee for superintending a dinner will be five guineas : 
and dlie Agent entreats his clients to trust entirely to him and 
his subordinates for the arrangement of the repast , — not tothmk 
of inserting dishes of their own ‘invention, or producing wine 
from their own cellars, as he engages to have it brought in the 
best order, and fit for immediate drinking. Should the Am- 
phitryon, however, desire some particular dish or wine, he must 
consult The Agent, in the first case by writing, in the second, 
by sending a sample to the Agent’s chambers. For it is mani- 
fest that the whole complexion of a dinner may be altered by 
the insertion of a single dish ; and, therefore, parties will do 
well to mention their wishes on the first interview with the 
Agent. He cannot be called upon to recompose his bill of fare, 
except at great risk to the ensemble of the dinner and enormous 
inconvenience to himself. 

‘‘7. The Agent will be at home for consultation from ten 
o’clock until two — earlier, if gentlemen who are engaged at 
early hours in the City desire to have an interview : and be it 
remembered, that a personal interview is always the best : for it 
is greatly necessary to know not only the number but the char- 
acter of the guests whom the Amphitryon proposes to entertain, 
— whether they are fond of any particular wine or dish, what 
is their state of health, rank, style, profession, &c. 

^‘8. At two o’clock, he will commence his rounds; for as 
the metropolis is wide, it is clear that he must be early in the 
field in some districts. From 2 to 3 he will be in Russell 
Square and the neighborhood ; 3 to 3^, Harley Street, Port- 
land Place, Cavendish Square, and environs ; 3^ to 4^, Port- 
man Square, Gloucester Place, Baker Street, &c,, to 5, the 
new district about Hyde Park Terrace ; 5 to 5^, St. John’s Wood 
and the Regent’s Park. He will be in Grosvenor Square by 6, 
and in Belgrave Square, Pimlico, and its vicinity, by 7, Parties 
there are requested not to dine until 8 o’clock ; and The 
Agent, once for all, peremptorily announces that he will not 
go to the palace, where it is utterly impossible to serve a good 
dinner.” 


6o8 


THE FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS, 


“to tradesmen. 

“ Every Monday evening during the season the Gastro- 
nomic Agent proposes to give a series of trial-dinners, to which 
the principal gourmands of the metropolis, and a few of The 
Agent’s most respectable clients, will be invited. Covers ^Yiii 
be laid for ten at nine o’clock precisely. And as The Agent 
does not propose to exact a single shilling of profit from their 
bills, and as his recommendation wall be of infinite value to 
them, the tradesmen he empfoys will furnish the w'eekly dinner 
gratis. Cooks wfil attend (who have acknow'ledged characters) 
upon the same terms. To save trouble, a book wall be kept 
wdiere butchers, poulterers, fishmongers, &c., may inscribe their 
names in order, taking it by turns to supply the trial-table. 
Wine-merchants will naturally compete ever}' w'eek promis- 
cuously, sending what they consider their best samples, and 
leaving with the hall-porter tickets of the prices. Confectionery 
to be done out of the house. Fruiterers, market-men, as 
butchers and poulterers. The Agent’s mat tre-d' hotel will give a 
receipt to each individual for the articles he produces ; and let 
all remember that The Agent is a very keen judge,, and woe 
betide those who serve him or his clients ill ! 

“ George Gormand Gobbleton. 

“ Carlton Gardens, yiine lo, 1842.” 

Here I have sketched out the heads of such an address as I 
conceive a gastronomic agent might put forth ; and appeal 
pretty confidently to the British public regarding its merits and 
my own discovery. If this be not a profession — a new one — a 
feasible one — a lucrative one, — I don’t know' what is. Say 
that a man attends but fifteen dinners daily, that is seventy-five 
guineas, or five hundred and fifty pounds w'eekly, or fourteen 
thousand three hundred pounds for a season of six months : 
and how' many of our younger sons have such a capital even ? 
Let, then, some unemployed gentleman with the requisite quali- 
fications come forward. It will not be necessary that he should 
have done all that is stated in the prospectus ; but, at any rate, 
let him say he has : there can’t be much harm in an innocent 
fib of that sort ; for the gastronomic agent must be a sort of 
dinner-pope, whose opinions cannot be supposed to err. 

And as he really will be an excellent judge of eating and 
drinking, and will bring his whole mind to bear upon the ques- 
tion, and will speedily acquire an experience which no person 


FITZ-BOODLE PROFESSIONS. 609 

out of the profession can possibly have ; and as, moreover, he 
will be an honorable man, not practising upon his client in any 
way, or demanding sixpence beyond his just fee, the world will 
gain vastly by the coming forward of such a person — gain in good 
dinners, and absolutely save money : for what is five guineas 
for a dinner of sixteen ? The sum may be gaspille by a cook- 
wench, or by one of those abominable before-named pastry- 
cooks with their green trays. 

If any man take up the business, he will invite me, of 
course, to the Monday dinners. Or does ingratitude go so far 
as that a man should forget the author of his good fortune I 
believe it does. Turn we away from the sickening theme ! 

And now, having concluded my professions, how shall I ex- 
press my obligations to the discriminating press Of this country 
for the unanimous applause which hailed my first appearance 
It is the more wonderful, as I pledge my sacred word, I never 
wrote a document before much longer than a laundresses bill, 
or the acceptance of an invitation to dinner. But enough of 
this egotism : thanks for praise conferred sound like vanity \ 
gratitude is hard to speak of, and at present it swells the full 
heart of 

George Savage Fitz-Boodle, 


END OF '‘the FITZ-BOODLE PAPERS.” 



THE 


WOLVES AND THE LAMB. 


DRAMATIS PERSONS. 


Mr. Horace Mileiken, a Widower^ a wealthy City Merchant 
George Milliken, a Child, his Son. 

Captain Touchit, his Friend. 

Clarence Kicklebury, brother to Milliken'' s late Wife, 

John Howell, yJ/.’s Butler and co7ifidential Servant, 

Charles Page, Foot-boy, 

Bulkeley, Lady Kicklebury' s Serva/it, 

Mr. Bonnington. 

Coach7na7i, Cabman ; a Bluecoat Boy, another Boy [Mrs. Prior's 
Sojis . ) 

Lady Kicklebury, Mother-in-law to Milliken, 

Mrs. Bonnington, Milliken's Mother [married again), 

Mrs. Prior. 

Miss Prior, her Daughter, Governess to Milliken's Children. 
Arabella Milliken, a Child. 

Mary Barlow, School-room Maid. 

A grown-up Girl and Child of Mrs, Prior's, Lady K,'s Maid, 
Cook, 


THE 


WOLVES AND THE LAMB. 


ACT I. 

Scene. — Milliken’s villa at Richmond; hvo drawing-rooms 
opening into one another, 7%^ Mrs. Milliken’s portrait 
over the mafitel-piece ; book-cases writing-tables^ piano ^ ne7vs- 
papers,, a handsomely f urnished saloon. The backroom opens 
with very large windows, 07i the laztm and pleasure-groutid ; 
gate, and wall — over which the heads of a cab and a carriage 
are seen, as perso?is at'rive. Fruit, and a ladder on the walls, 
A door to the dming-room, another to the sleeping apartments, 
&*c, 

John. — Everybody out; governor in the city; governess 
(heigh-ho !) walking in the Park with the children ; ladyship 
gone out in the carriage. Let’s sit down and have a look at 
the papers. Buttons ! fetch the Afor/img Rost out of Lady 
Kicklebury’s room. Where’s the Daily News, sir ? 

Page. — Think it’s in Milliken’s room. 

John.— M illiken ! you scoundrel ! What do you mean by 
Milliken Speak of your employer as your governor if you 
like ; but not as simple Milliken. Confound your impudence ! 
you’ll be calling me Howell next. 

Page. — Well ! I didn’t know. You call him Milliken. 

John. — Because I know him, because I’m intimate with him, 
because there’s not a secret he has but I may have it for the 
asking ; because the letters addressed to Horace Milliken, Esq., 
might as well be addressed John Howell, Esq., for I read ’em, 
I put ’em away and docket ’em, and remember ’em. T know 

(613) 


6i4 wolves and the LAMB, 

his affairs better than he does : his income to a shilling, pay 
his tradesmen, wear his coats if I like, /may call Mr. Milliken 
what I please ; but not you,, you little scamp of a clod-hopping 
ploughboy. Know your station and do your business, or you 
don’t wear///6V// buttons long, I promise you. \Rxit Page.] 

Let* me go on with the paper [/raLs], How brilliant this 
writing is ! Times,, Chronicle,, Daily News,, they’re all good, 
blest if they ain’t. How much better the nine leaders in them 
three daily papers is, than nine speeches in the House of Com- 
mons ! Take a very best speech in the ’Ouse now, and com- 
pare it with an article in The Times ! I say, the newspaper 
has the best of it for philosophy, for wit, novelty, good sense 
too. And the party that writes the leading article is nobody, 
and the chap that speaks in the House of Commons is a hero. 
Lord, Lord, how the world is ’umbugged ! Pop’lar representa- 
tion ! what is pop’lar representation ? Dammy, it’s a farce. 
Hallo ! this article is stole ! I remember a passage in Montes- 
quieu uncommonly like it. \_Gocs and gets the book. As he is 
standing upon the sofa to get it,, and sitting do7vn to read it,, Miss 
Prior the Children have come in at the garden. Children 
pass across stage. Miss Prior enters by open 7mndow, bringing 
flowers into the roomA^ 

John. — It is like it. \I{e slaps the book,, and seeing Miss 
Prior 7 vho enters,, then jumps up from sofa, saying very respect- 
fully, '\ 

John. — I beg your pardon, Miss. 

Miss P. — [sarcastically.'] Do I disturb you, Howell } 

John. — Disturb ! I have no right to say — a servant has no 
right to be disturbed, but I hope I may be pardoned for ven- 
turing to look at a volume in the libery. Miss, just in reference 
to a newspaper harticle — that’s all. Miss. 

Miss P. — You are very fortunate in ffnding anything to in- 
terest you in the paper. I’m sure. 

John. — Perhaps, Miss, you are not accustomed to political 
discussion, and ignorant of — ah — I beg your pardon : a servant, 
I know, has no right to speak. [Exit into dining-room, making 
a low bow.] 

Miss Prior. — 'bhe coolness of some people is really quite 
extraordinary ! the airs they give themselves, the way in which 
they answer one, the books they read ! Montesquieu: ‘‘ P^sprit 
des Lois ! ” [takes book up ivliich f. has left o?i sofa.] I believe 
the man has actually taken this from the shelf. I am sure Mr. 
Milliken, or her ladyship, never would. Tlie otlier day “ Ilcl- 
vetius ” was found in Mr. Howell’s t^antry, forsooth ! It is 


THE JIVLTEE A A/) 77/E JAM/;. 


wonderful how he picked up iMcrich \\1 h1.si wl- were abroad. 
“ Esprit des Lois ! ’’ what is it ? ii must l^e (ireadiully stupid. 
And as for reading Helvetius 'N' who, I suppose, was a Roman 

generalj, I really can’t understand iiow Dear, dear ! what 

airs these persons give themselves ! Wliat will come next ? A 
footman — i beg Mr. Howell’s pardon — a butler and conhden- 
tial valet lolls on the drawing-room sofa, and reads Montes- 
quieu ! Impudence ! And add to this, he follows me for the 
last two or three montlis with eyes that are quite I-on id. Vv'hat 
can the creature mean Ikit 1 forgot — I am only a governess. 
A governess is not a lady — a governess is but a servant — a 
governess is to work and walk all day with the children, dine 
in the school-room, and come to the drawing-room to play the 
man of the Jiouse to sleep. A governess is a domestic, only 
lier place is not the servants’ hall, and she is paid not quite so 
well as the butler who serves her her glass of wine. ()dious I 
George ! Arabella ! there are those little wrctclies quarrelling 
again ! Exit^ Children are heard calling oat. and seen quarrellmg 
in garden?^ 

John [re-entering ]. — See w'here she moves ! grace is in all 
her steps. ’Eaven in her high — no — a-h.eavcn in her heye, in 
every gesture dignity and love — ah, I wish I could say it ! I 
wish you may procure it, poor fool I She passes by me — she 
tr-r-amples on me. Here’s the chair she sets in it.] 

Here’s the piano she plays on. Pretty keys, tliem fingers 
OLithivories you I When she i>lays on it, i stand and listen at 
the drawing-room door, and my heart th.r-obs in time! Fool, 
fool, fool ! why did you look on her, John Howell ! wiuv 'did 
you beat for her, busy heart ! You were tranquil till you kitew 
her! I thought I could have been a-happy with Mary till then. 
That girl’s affection soothed me. Her conversation didn’t 
amuse me much, her ideers ain’t exactly elevated, but they are 
just and proper. Her attentions pleased me. She ever kep’ 
the best cup of tea for me. She crisped my buttered (oast, or 
mixed my quiet tumbler for me, as J sat of hevenings and read 
my newspaper in the hitching. Slie I'cspected the sanctaty of 
my pantrw When I was a-stiidyijig there, she never inter- 
rupted me. She darned my stockings for me, she starched 
and folded my chokers, and she sowed on the habsent buttons 
of whicli time and chance had l)crcft mv linning. She has a 
good heart, Mary has. I know she’d get up and black ihe 
boots for me of the coldest wii'iter mornings. She did when 
W'C was in humbler life, she did. 


6i6 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB. 


Enter Mary. 

You have good heart, Mary ! 

Mary. — Have I, dear John ? [sadly ^ 

John. — Yes, child — yes. I think a better never beat in 
woman's bosom. You’re good to everybody — good to your 
parents whom you send half your wages to : good to your em- 
ployers whom you never robbed of a haU'penny. 

Mary [7cdiimpennd \. — Yes, 1 did, John. I took the jelly 
when you were in bed with the influenza ; and brought you the 
pork-wine negus. 

John. — Port, not pork, child. Pork is the hanimal which 
Jews ab’or. Port is from Oporto in Portugal. 

Mary [still crying. — Yes, John ; you know everything almost, 
John. 

John. — And you, poor child, but little ! It’s not heart you 
want, you little trump, it^s education, Mary : it’s information : 
it's head, head, head ! You can’t learn. You never can learn. 
Your ideers ain’t no good. You never can hinterchange ’em 
with mine. Conversation between us is impossible. It’s not 
your fault. Some people are born clever ; some are born tall, 
I ain’t tall. 

Mary. — Ho ! you’re big enough for me, John. [Offers to 
take his handl\ 

John. — Let go my ’and — my a-hand, Mary ! I say, some 
people are born with brains, and some with big figures. Look 
at that great ass, Bulkeley, Lady K.’s man — the besotted, stupid 
beast I He’s as big as a life-guardsman, but he ain’t no more 
education nor ideers than the ox he feeds on. 

Mary. — Law, John, whatever do you mean ? 

John. — Hm ! you know not, little one ! you never can 
know. H3.ve yo?/ ever felt the pangs of imprisoned genius.^ 
have yo?i ever felt what ’tis to be a slave ? 

Mary. — Not in a free country, I should hope, John Howell 
— no such a thing. A place is a place, and I know mine, and 
am content with the spear of life in which it pleases heaven to 
place me, John ; and I wish you were, and remembered what 
we learned from our parson when we went to school togethei 
in dear old Pigeoncot, John — when you used to help little Mary 
with her lessons, John, and fought Bob Brown, the big butcher’s 
boy, because he was rude to me, John, and he gave you that 
black hi. 

John. — Say eye, Mary, not heye [j^ently\ 

Mary. — E ye ; and I thought you never looked better m all 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB, 617 

your life than you did then : and we both took service at Squire 
Milliken’s — me as a dairy-girl, and you as knife-boy ; and 
good masters have they been to us from our youth hup : both 
old Squire Milliken and Mr. Charles as is master now, and 
poor Mrs. as is dead, though she had her tantrums — and I 
thought we should save up and take the “ Milliken Arms — - 
and now we have saved up — and now, now, now — oh, you are 
a stone, a stone, a stone ! and I wish you were hung round my 
neck, and I were put down the well 1 There’s the hup-stairs 
bell. [S/i<^ sta^rfs, changing her manner as she hears the hell^ 
a 7 id exiti] 

John [looking after her']. — It’s all true* Gospel-true. We 
were children in the same village — sat on the same form at 
school. And it was for her sake that Bob Brown the butcher’s 
boy whopped me. A black eye ! I’m not handsome. But if 
I were ugly, ugly as the Saracen’s ’Ead, ugly as that beast 
Bulkeley, 1 know it would be all the same to Mary. She has 
never forgot the boy she loved, that brought birds’-nests for 
her, and spent his halfpenny on cherries, and bought a fairing 
with his first half-crown — a brooch it was, I remember, of two 
billing doves a-hopping on one twig, and brought it home for 
little yellow-haired, blue-eyed, red-cheeked Mar}^ Lord, Lord ! 
I don’t like to think how I’ve kissed ’em, the pretty cheeks ! 
they’ve got quite pale now with cr}dng — and she has never 
once reproached me, not once, the trump, the little tr-oump ! 

Is it my fault [stamping] that Fate has separated us? Why 
did my 3^oung master take me up to Oxford, and give me the 
run of his libery and the society of the best scouts in the Uni- 
versity ? Why did he take me abroad ? Why have I been to 
Italy, France, Jummany with hini — their manners noted and 
their realms surveyed, by jingo ! I’ve improved myself, and 
Mary has remained as you was. I try a conversation, and she 
can’t respond. She’s never got a word of poetry beyond 
Watt’s Ims, and if I talk of Byron or Moore to her. I’m' blest 
if she knows anything more about ’em than the cook, who is 
as h ignorant as a pig, or that beast Bulkeley, Lady Kick’s 
footman. Above all, why, why did I see the woman upon 
whom my wretched heart is fixed forever, and who carries 
away my soul with her — prostrate, I say, prostrate, through the 
mud at the skirts of her gownd ! Enslaver ! why did I ever 
come near you ? O enchantress Kelipso ! how you have got 
hold of me 1 Ic was Fate, Fate, Fate. When Mrs. Milliken 
fell ill of scarlet, fev'er at Naples, Milliken was away at Peters- 
borough, Rooshia, loo-k^ng after his property. Her foring 


6iS 


THE WOLVES A XD 'J'lJE LAME, 


woman lied. Me and the governess remained and nursed he^ 
and the children. We nursed the little ones out of the fever. 
W'e buried their mother. W'e brought the children home over 
Halp and Happenine. I nursed 'em all three. I tended ^em 
all three, the orphans, and the lovely gu-gu-governess. At 
Rome, where she took ill, I waited on her ; as we went to 
Florence, had we been attacked by twenty thousand brigands, 
this little arm had courage for them all ! And if I loved thee, 
Juliai was I wrong ? and if I basked in thy beauty d;iy and 
night, Julia, am I not a man ? and if, before this Peri, this en- 
chantress, this gazelle, I forgot poor little Mary Barlow, how 
could I help it 't I say, how the doose could I help it t 

\Ente?‘ Lady Kicklebury, Bitlkeley folloimns:; with parcels 
and a spaniel?^ 

Lady K. — Are the children and the governess come home ? 

John. — Yes, my lady \in a perfectly -altered tone\ 

Lady K. — Bulkeley, take those parcels to my sitting-room. 

John. — Get up, old stoopid. Push along, old daddylonglegs 
[aside to Bulkeley]. 

Lady K. — Does any one dine here to-day, Howell ? 

John. — Captain Touchit, my lady. 

Lady K. — He’s always dining here. 

John. — My master’s oldest friend. 

Lady K. — Don’t tell me. Pie comes from his club. He 
smells of smoke ; he is a low, vulgar person. Send Pinhorn 
up to me when you go down stairs. [Exit Lady A”.] 

John. — I know. Send Pinhorn to me, means. Send my 
bonny brown hair, and send itiy beautiful complexion, and send 
ray figure — and, O Lord ! O Lord ! what an old tigress that 
is ! What an old Hector ! How she do twist Milliken round 
her thumb ! He’s born to be bullied by women : and I remem- 
ber him henpecked — let’s see, ever since — ever since the time 
of that little gloveress at Woodstock, whose picter poor Mrs. 
M. made such a noise about when she found it in the lumber- 
room. Hell ! her picture will be going into the lumber-room 
some day. M. must marry to get rid of his mother-in-law and 
mother over him : no man can stand it, not M. himself, who's 
a Job of a man. Isn’t he, look at liim ! [As he has been speak- 
ing, the bell has rang, the Page has run to the garden-door, am) 
Milliken enters through the gar deft,, laden with a hamper, bauu 
box and cricket- bat.] 

Milliken. — Why was the carriage not sent for me. Howell^ 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB. Cig 

There was no cab at ilie station, and I have had to toil all the 
way up the hill with these confounded parcels of my lady’s. 

John. — I suppose the shower took off all the cabs, sir. 
When did a man ever get a cab in a shower? — or a policeman 
at a pinch — or a friend when you wanted him — or anything at 
the right time, sir ? 

Milliken. — But, sir, why didn’t the carriage come, I say? 

John. — You know. 

Mh.liken. — How do you mean I know ? confound your im- 
pudence ! 

John. — Lady Kicklebury took it — your mother-in-law took 
it — went out a-visiting — Ham Common, Petersham, Twick’nam 
— doose knows whe/e. She, and her footman, and her sp’an’l 
clog. 

Milliken. — Well, sir, suppose her ladyship did take the 
carriage ? Hasn’t she a perfect right ? And if the carriage 
was gone, I want to know, John, why the devil the pony-chaise 
wasn’t sent with the groom ? Am I to bring a bonnet-box and 
a hamper of fish in my own hands, I should like to know ? 

John. — Heh ! \laughs\. 

Milliken. — Why do you grin, you Cheshire cat ? 

John. — Your mother-in-law had the carriage; and your 
mother sent for the pony-chaise. Your Pa wanted to go .and 
see the Wicar of Putney. Mr. Bonnington don’t like walking 
when he can ride. 

Milliken. — And why shouldn’t Mr. Bonnington ride, sir, 
as long as there’s .a carriage in my stable ? Mr. Bonnington 
has had the gouL sir ! Mr. Bonnington is a clergyman, and 
married to my mother. He has every title to my respect. 

John. — And to your pony-chaise — yes, sir. 

Milliken. — And to everything he likes in this house, sir. 

John. — What a good fellow you are, sir ! You’d give your 
head off your shoulders, that you would. Is the fish for dinner 
to-day? Bandbox for my lady, I suppose, sir? \lDoks /;/] — 
'Furban, feathers, bugles, marabouts, spangles — doose knows 
what. Yes, it’s for her ladyship. \2^o Page]. Charles, take 
this bandbox to her ladyship’s maid. \To his master?^ What 
sauce. would you like with the turbot? Lobster sauce or Hol- 
landaise ? Hollandaise is best — most wholesome for you. Any- 
body besides Captain Touchit coming to dinner ? 

Milliken. — No one that I know of. 

John. — Very good. Bring up a bottle of the brown hock ? 
He likes the brown hock. Touchit does. [A’.r/V John.] 

40 


620 


THE WOLVES AX D THE LAME. 


Enter Children. I'hey run to Millikex. 

Both. — H ow d’you do, Papa ! How do you do, Papa ! 

Millikex. — K iss your old father, Arabella. Come here 
George What ? 

George. — D on’t care for kissing — hissing’s for gals. Have 
you brought me that bat from London 

Millikex. — Y es. Here’s the bat; and here’s the ball [taLos 
one front pocket \ — and 

George — W here’s the wickets, Papa. O-o-o — where’s the 
wickets.^ \Jiowls?^ 

Millikex. — M y dear, darling boy ! I left them at the 
office. What a silly papa I was to forget them 1 Parkins for- 
got them. 

George. — T hen turn him away, I say ! Turn him away ! 
\He stamps.'] 

Millikex. — W hat ! an old, faithful clerk and servant of 
your father and grandfather for thirty years past ? An old 
man, who loves us all, and has nothing but our pay to live on ? 

Arabella. — O h, you naughty boy ! 

George. — I ain’t a naughty boy. 

Arabella. — Y ou are a naughty boy. 

George. — He ! he ! he ! he ! [^Gritts at her?[ 

Millikex. — H ush, children ! Here, Arabella darling, here 
is a book for you. Look — aren’t they pretty pictures ? 

Arabella. — I s it a story. Papa ? I don’t care for stories in 
general. I like something instructive and serious. Grand- 
mamma Bonnington and grandpapa say ^ 

George. — H e’s not your grandpapa. 

Arabella. — H e is my grandpapa. 

George. — O h, you great story ! Look ! look ! there’s a cab. 
\Runs out. The head of a Hansotn cab is seen over the garden gate. 
Bell rings. Page comes. Altercaiioti hehveen Cabman and Cap- 
tain Touchit appears to go on^ during which] 

Millikex. — C ome and kiss your old father, Arabella. He’s 
hungry for kisses. 

Arabella. — D on’t. 1 want to go and look at the cab ; and 
to tell CajDtain Touchit that he mustn’t use naughty words. 
\Ru 71 s towards garden. Page is seen carry hig a carpet-bag.] 

Enter Touchit through the open window smoking a cigar. 

Touchit. — How d’ye do, Milliken } How are tallows, 
hey, my noble merchant ? I Itave brought my bag, and intend, 
to sleep 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB. 


621 


George. — I say, godpapa 

Touchit. — Well, godson ! 

George. — Give us a cigar ! 

Touchit. — -Oh, you enfant terrible ! 

Milliken [wLeezi/y]. — Ah — ahem George Touchit ! 

you wouldn't mind — a— smoking that cigar in the garden, would 
you ? Ah — ah ! 

Touchit. — Hullo! What's in the wind now ? You used 
to be a most inveterate smoker, Horace. 

Milliken. — The fact is — my mother-in-law — Lady Kickle- 
bury — doesn't like it, and while she's with us, you know 

Touchit. — Of course, of course [f/irows away cigar\ I beg 
her ladyship's pardon. I remember when you were courting 
her daughter she used not to mind it. 

Milliken. — Don't — don't allude to those times. [He looks 
up, at his -wife^s picture?^ 

George. — My mamma was a Kicklebury. The Kickle- 
burys are the oldest family in the world. My name is George 
Kicklebury Milliken, of Pigeoncot, Hants ; the Grove, Rich- 
mond, Surrey; and Portland Place, London, Esquire — my 
name is. 

Touchit. — You have forgotten Billiter Street, hemp and 
tallow merchant. 

George. — Oh, bother! I don't care about that. I shall 
leave that when I'm a man : when I'm a man and come into 
my property. 

Milliken. — You come into your property.^ 

George. — I shall, you know, when you're dead, papa. I 
shall have this house, and Pigeoncot ; and the house in town 
— no, I don't mind about the house in town — and I sha'n’t let 
Bella live with me — no, I won’t. 

Bella. — No ; /won't live with you. And /’// have Pigeon- 
cot. 

George. — You sha'n't have Pigeoncot. I’ll have it : and 
the ponies : and I won't let you ride them — and the dogs, and 
you sha’n’t have even a puppy to play with — and the dairy — and 
won’t I have as much cream as I like — that’s all ! 

Touchit.— What a darling boy! Your children are brought 
up beautifully, Milliken. It's quite delightful to see them 
together. 

George. — And I shall sink the name of Milliken, I shall. 

Milliken. — Sink the name ? why George t 

George. — Because the Millikens arc nobodies — grand 
mamma says they are nobodies. The Kickleburys are gentle* 
men, and came over with William the Conqueror. 


622 


THE WOLA-ES ANP TIfE LAME, 


Bella. — I know when that was. One thousand one hurh 
dred and one thousand one hundred and onety-one ! 

George. — Bother when they came over ! But I know 
this, when I come into the property I shall sink the name of 
Milliken. 

Milliken. — So you are ashamed of your father’s name, are 
you, George, my boy } 

George. — Ashamed ! No, I ain’t ashamed. Only Kickle* 
bury is sweller. I know it is. Grandmamma says so. 

Bella. — My grandmamma does not say so. My dear 
grandmamma says that family pride is sinful, and all belongs 
to this wicked world ; and that in a veiy^ few years what our 
names are will not matter. 

George. — Yes, she says so because her father kept a shop ; 
and so did Pa’s father keep a sort of shop — only Pa’s a gen- 
tleman now. 

Touchit. — Darling child ! How I wish 1 were married ! 
If I had such a dear boy as you, George, do you know what 
I would give, him ? 

George \(iuite plcascd\ — What would you give him, god- 
papa ? 

Touchit. — I would give him as sound a flogging as ever 
boy had, my darling. I would whip this nonsense out of him. 
I would send him to school, where I would pray that he might 
be well thrashed • and if when he came home he was still 
ashamed of his father, I would put him apprentice to a chimney- 
sweep — that’s what I would do. 

George. — I’m glad you’re not my father, that s all. 

Bella, — And Fm glad your not my father, because you are 
a wicked man ! 

Milliken. — Arabella ! 

Bella. — Grandmamma says so. He is a worldly man, and 
the world is wicked. And he goes to the play : and he smokes, 
and he says 

Touchit. — Bella, what do I say } 

Bella. — Oh, something dreadful ! You know you do ! I 
heard you say it to the cabman. 

Touchit. — So I did, so I did ! He asked me fifteen shil- 
lings from Piccadilly, and I told him to go to to some- 

body whose name begins with a D. 

Children. — Here’s another carriage passing. 

Bella. — The Lady Rumble’s carriage. 

George. — No, it ain’t : it’s Captain Boxer’s carriage {they 
run into the gar den\ 


THK WOLVES AM) El/E LAMB. 


623 


Touchit. — And this is the pass to which you have brought 
yourself, Horace Milliken ! Why, in your wife’s time, it Vvas 
better than this, my poor fellow ! 

Milliken. — Don’t speak of her in that way, George 
Touchit ! 

Touchit. — What have I said ? I am only regretting her loss 
for your sake. She tyrannized over you ; turned your friends 
out of doors ; took your name out of your clubs ; dragged 
you about from party to party, though you can no more dance 
than a bear, and from opera to opera, though you don’t know 
God Save the Queen” from ‘‘Rule Britannia.” You don’t, 
sir ; you know you don’t. But Arabella was better than her 
mother, who has taken possession of you since your widow- 
hood. 

Milliken. — My dear fellow ! no she hasn’t. There’s my 
mother. 

Touchit. — Yes, to be sure, there’s Mrs. Bonnington, and 
they quarrel over you like the two ladies over the baby before 
King Solomon. 

Milliken. — Play the satirist, my good friend ! laugh at my 
weakness ! 

Touchit. — I know you to be as plucky a fellow as ever 
stepped, Milliken, when a man’s in the case. 1 know you and 
I stood up to each other for an hour and a half at Westmin- 
ster. 

Milliken. — Thank y*ou ! We were both dragons of war! 
tremendous champions ! Perhaps I a^n a little soft as regards 
women. I know my weakness well enough ; but in my case 
what is my remedy } Put yourself in my position. Be a 
widower with two young children. What is more natural than 
that the mother of my poor wife should come and superintend 
my family ? My own mother can’t. She has a half-dozen of 
little half brothers and sisters, and a husband of her own to 
attend to. I dare say Mr. Bonnington and my mother will 
come to dinner to-day. 

Touchit. — Of course they will, my poor old Milliken,' you 
don’t dare to dine without them. 

Milliken. — Don’t go on in that manner, George Touchit I 
Why should not my stepfather and my mother dine with me ? 
I can afford it. I am a domestic man and like to see my re* 
lations about me. I am in the City all day. 

Touchit. — Luckily for you. 

Milliken. — And my pleasure of an evening is to sit under 
my own vine and under my own fig-tree with my own olive- 


624 


THE IVOLTES AA'D THE LAMB 


brandies round about nne ; to sit by my fire with my children 
at my knees ; to coze over a snug bottle of claret after dinner 
with a friend like you to share it ; to see the young folks at the 
breakfast-table of a morning, and to kiss them and so olT to 
business with a cheerful heart. This was my scheme in mar- 
rying, had it ploased heaven to prosper my plan. When I was 
a boy and came from school and college, I used to see Mr. 
Bonnkigton, my father-in-law, with his young ones clustering 
round about him, so happy to be with him ! so eager to wait on 
him ! all down on their little knees round my mother before 
breakfast or jumping up on his after dinner. It was who 
should reach his hat, and who should bring his coat, and who 
should fetch his umbrella, and who should get the last kiss. 

Touchit. — What didn’t he kiss you 2 Oh, the hard- 
hearted old ogre ! 

Milliken. — Don't, Touchit ! Don’t laugh at Mr. Bon- 
nington ! He is as good a fellow as ever breathed. Between 
you and me, as my half brothers and sisters increased and 
multiplied year after year, I used to feel rather lonely, 
rather bowled out, you understand. But I saw them so happy 
that I longed to have a home of my own. When my mother 
proposed Arabella for me (for she and Lady Kicklebury were 
immense friends at one time), I was glad enough to give up 
clubs and bachelorhood, and to settle down as a married man. 
My mother acted for the best. My poor wife’s character, my 
mother used to say, changed after marriage. I was not as 
happy as I hoped to be ; but I tried for it. George, I am not 
so comfortable now as I might be. A house without a mistress, 
with two mothers-in-law reigning over it — one worldly and aris- 
tocratic, another what you call serious, though she don’t mind 
a rubber of whist ; I give you my honor my mother plays a game 
at whist, and an uncommonly good game too — each woman 
dragging over a child to her side ; of course such a family can- 
not be comfortable. [Bel/ rings/] There’s the first dinner- 
bell. Go and dress, for heaven’s sake. 

Touchit. — Why dress ? There is no company ! 

Milliken. — Why ? ah ! her ladyship likes it, you see. And 
it costs nothing to humor her. Quick, for she don’t like to be 
kept wailing. 

Touchit. — Horace Milliken ! what a pity it is the law 
declares a widower shall not marry his wife’s mother ! She 
would marry you else, — she would, on my word. 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB. 


625 


Enter John. 

John. — I have took the Captain’s things in the blue room, 
sir. [Exeunt gentlemen^ John arranges tables^ 

Ha ! Mrs. Prior ! I ain’t partial to Mrs. Prior. I think 
she’s an artful old dodger, Mrs. Prior. I think there’s mystery 
in her unfathomable pockets, and schemes in the folds of her 
umbrella. But — but she’s Julia’s mother, and for the beloved 
one’s sake I am civil to her. 

Mrs. Prior. — Thank you, Charles \io the Page, who has 
been seen to let her in at the gar den-gate\^ I am so much obliged to 
you ! Good afternoon, Mr. Plowell. Is my daughter — are the 
darling children well ? Oh, I am quite tired and weary ! 
Three horrid omnibuses were full, and I have had to walk the 
whole weary long way. Ah, times are changed with me, Mr. 
Howell. Once when I was young and strong, I had my hus- 
band’s carriage to ride in. 

John [aside], — His carriage! his coal-wagon! I know well 
enough who old Prior was. A merchant ? yes. a pretty mer- 
chant ! kep’ a lodging-house, share in a barge, touting for 
orders, and at last a snug little place in the Gazette, 

Mrs. Prior. — How is your cough, Mr. Howell ? I have 
brought you some lozenges for it [takes numberless articles from 
her pocket], and if you would take them of a night and morning 
— oh, indeed, you would get better ! The late Sir Henry Hal- 
ford recommended them to Mr. Prior. He was his late Maj- 
esty’s physician and ours. You know we have seen happier 
times, Mr. Howell. Oh, I am quite tired and faint. 

John. — Will you take anything before the schoolroom tea, 
ma’am You will stop to tea, I hope, with Miss Prior, and 
our young folks ? 

Mrs. Prior. — Thahk you : a little glass of wine when one 
is so faint — a little crumb of biscuit when one is so old and 
tired ! I have not been accustomed to want, you know ; and in 
tny poor dear Mr. Prior’s time 

John. — I’ll fetch some wine, ma’am. [Exit to the dining- 
room 1] 

Mrs. Prior.— Bless the man, how abrupt he is in his manner ! 
He quite shocks a poor lady who has been used to better days. 
What’s here ? Invitations — ho ! Bills for Lady Kicklebury ! 
They are not paid. Where is Mr. M. going to dine, I wonder ? 
Captain and Mrs. Hopkinson, Sir John and Lady Tomkinson, 
request the pleasure. Request the pleasure ! Of course they 
do. They are always asking Mr. M. to dinner. They have 


626 the wolves and the lamb. 

daughters to marr\^, and Mr. M. is a widower with three thou 
sand a year, every shilling of it. I must tell Lady Kicklebury. 
He must never go to these places — never, never — mustn't be 
allowed. [ While talking, she opens all the letters o?i the table, 
fitm?nages the portfolio and writbig-box, looks at cards 07i mantel- 
piece, work in wojE-basket tries tea-box and shows the greatest 
actiinty and curiosity?^ 

Re-enter John, bearing a tray with cakes, a decanter, 

Thank you, thank you, Mr. Howell ! Oh, oh, dear me, not so 
much as that ! Half a glass, and one biscuit, please. What 
elegant sherry ! [sips a little, and puts down glass on tray\ Do 
you know, I remember in better days, Mr. Howell, when my 
poor dear husband ? 

John. — Beg your pardon. There’s Milliken’s bell going like 
mad. [Zfjv/V John.] 

Mrs. Prior. — What an abrupt person ! Oh, but it’s com- 
fortable, this wine is ! And — and I think how my poor Char- 
lotte would like a little — she so weak, and ordered wine by the 
medical man ! And when dear Adolphus comes home from 
Christ’s quite tired, poor boy, and hungry, wouldn’t a bit of 
nice cake do him good ! Adolphus is so fond of plum-cake, the 
darling child ! And so is Frederick, little saucy rogue ; and 
I’ll give them my piece, and keep my glass of wine for my dear 
delicate angel Shatty ! [Takes bottle and paper out of her pocket, 
cuts off a great slice of cake, and pours wine from wineglass 
and decanter hito bottlel] 


Enter Page. 

Page. — Master George and Miss Bella is going to have 
their teas down here with Miss Prior, Mrs. Prior, and she’s up 
in the schoolroom, and my lady says you may stop to tea. 

Mrs. Prior. — Thank you, Charles 1 how tall you grow 
Those trousers would ht my darling Frederick to a nicety. 
Thank you, Charles. / know the way to the nursery. [Exit 
Mrs. P.] 

Page. — Know the way ! I believe she do know the way. 
Been a having cake and wine. Howell always gives her cake 
and wine — jolly cake, ain’t it ! and wine, oh, my ! 

Re-enter ]o\\^. 

John. — You young gormandizing cormorant ! What ! five 


'J'JiE WOLl'ES AND THE LAME. 


627 

meals a day ain’t enough for you. Wdiat ? beer ain’t good 
enough for you, hey ? \_Pulls boys ea?'s.'\ 

Page [crying]. — Oh, oh, do-o-n’t, Mr. Howell. I only took 
half a glass, upon my honor. 

John. — Your a-honor, you lying young vagabond ! I wonder 
the ground don’t open and swallow you. Half a glass ! [holds 
lip dccantcrl] You’ve took half a bottle, you young Ananias ! 
Mark this, sir ! When I was a boy, a boy on my promotion, a 
child kindly took in from charit3^-school, a horphan in buttons 
like you, 1 never lied : no, nor never stole, and you’ve done 
both, you little scoundrel. Don’t tell sir! there’s plums on 
your coat, crumbs on your cheek, and you smell sherr}^, sir I 1 
ain’t time to whop you now, but come to my pantry tq-night 
after you’ve took the tray down. Come without your jacket on., 
sir, and then I’ll teach you what it is to lie and steal. There’s 
the outer-bell. Scud, you vagabond ! 


Enter Lady K. 

Lady K. — What w^as the noise, pray } 

John. — A difference between me and young Page, my lady. 
I was instructing him to keep his hands from picking and steal- 
ing. I was learning him his lesson, my lady, and he was 
a-crying it out. 

Lady K. — It seems to me you are most unkind to that boy, 
Howell. He is my boy, sir. He comes from my estate. I will 
not have him ill-used. I think you presume on your long services. 
I will speak to my son-in-law^ about you. Yes, my lady ; no, 
my lady ; very good, my lady, yohn has answered each sentence 
as she is speaking., and exit gravely bowingl] That man must 
quit the house. Horace says he can’t do without him, but he 
must do without him. My poor dear Arabella was fond of him, 
but he presumes on that defunct angel’s partiality. Horace 
says this person keeps all his accounts, sorts all his letters, 
manages all his affairs, may be trusted with untold gold, and 
rescued little George out of the fire. Now I have come to live 
with my son-in-law, / will keep his accounts, sort his letters, 
and take charge of his money : and if little Georgy gets into 
die grate, / will take him out of the fire. W'hat is here ? In- 
vitation from Captain and Mrs. Hopkinson. Invitation from 
Sir John and Lady Tomkinson, who doit’t even ask me! 
Monstrous ! he never shall go — he shall not go 1 [Mrs. Prior 
has re-entered., she drops a veiy low curtsey to Lady K., as the 
latter., perceiving her, lays the cards down,] 


628 


THE WOLVES AXD THE' LAMB. 


Mrs. Prior. — Ah, dear madam ! how kind your ladyship’s 
message was to the poor lonely widow-woman ! Oh, how 
thoughtful it was of your ladyship to ask me to stay to tea ! 

Lady K. — With your daughter and th.e children ? Indeed, 
my good Mrs. Prior, you are very welcome ! 

Mrs. Prior. — Ah ! but isn’t it a cause of thankfulness to 
be made welcome ? Oughtn’t I to be grateful for these bless- 
ings ? — yes, 1 say blessings. And I am — I am, Lady Kickle- 
bury — to the mother — of — that angel who is gone \points to the 
pictHre\. It wa?i your sainted daughter left us — left my child to 
the care of Mr. Milliken, and — and you, who are now his 
guardian angel I may say. You are, Lady Kicklebury — you 
are. I say to my girl, Julia, Lady Kicklebury is Mr. Milliken’s 
guardian angel, is jjw/r guardian angel — for without you could 
she keep her place as governess to these darling children ? 
It would tear her heart in two to leave them, and yet she would 
be forced to do so. You know that some one — shall I hesitate 
to say 1 77ica?t 7 — that Mr. Milliken’s mother, excellent 

lady though she is, does not love my child because you love 
her. You do love her. Lady Kicklebury, and oh ! a mother’s 
fond heart pays you back ! But for you, my poor Julia must go 
— go, and leave the children whom a dying angel contided to 
her ! 

Lady K. — O! no, never! not whilst /am in this house, 
Mrs. Prior. Your daughter is a well-behaved j^oung woman : 
you have confided to me her long engagement to Lieutenant — 
Lieutenant What-d’you-caH’im, in the Indian service. She 
has been very, very good to my grandchildren — she brought 
them over from Naples when iny — my angel of an Arabella 
died there, and I will protect Miss Prior. 

Mrs. Prior. — Bless you, bless you, noble, admirable woman ! 
Don’t take it away ! I must, I will kiss your dear, generous 
hand! Take a mother’s, a widow’s blessings, Lady Kicklebury 
— the blessings of one who has known misfortune and seen 
better days, and thanks heaven — yes, heaven ! — for the protec- 
tors she has found ! 

Lady K. — You said — you had — several children, I think, 
iny good Mrs. Prior t 

Mrs. Prior. — Three boys — one, my eldest blessing, is in 
a wine-merchant’s office — ah, if Mr. Milliken liwuld but give 
him an order ! an order from this house ! an order from Lady 
Kicklebury ’s son-in-law ! — 

Lady K. — It shall be done, my good Prior — we will see. 

Mrs. Prior. — Another, Adolphus, dear fellow ! is in Christ’s 


THIl IVOL yES AND THE LAMB. 


629 

Hospital. It was clear, good Mr. Milliken’s nomination. Fred- 
erick is at Merchant Taylor’s : my darling Julia pays his school- 
ing. Besides, I have two girls — Amelia, quite a little toddles, 
just the size, though not so beautiful — but in a mother’s 
eyes all children are lovely, dear Lady Kicklebury — just tlie 
size of your dear granddaughter, whose clothes would fit her, 
I am sure. And my second, Charlotte, a girl as tall as your 
ladyship, though not with so fine a figure. Ah, no, Shatty ! ” 
I say to her, ‘‘you are as tall as our dear patroness, Lady Kick- 
lebury, whom you long so to see ; but you have not got her 
ladyship’s carriage and figure, child.” FJve children have I, 
left fatherless and penniless by my poor dear husband — but 
heaven takes care of the widow and orphan, madam — and 
heaven’s best creatures feed them ! — you know whom I mean. 

Lady K. — Should you not like, would you object to take — 
a frock or two of little Arabella’s to your child ? and if Pin- 
horn, my maid, will let me, Mrs. Prior, I will see if I cannot 
find something against winter for your second daughter, as you 
say we are of a size. 

Mrs. Prior. — 'Fhe widow’s and orphans’ blessings upon 
you ! I said my Charlotte was as tall, but I never said she 
had such a figure as yours — who has } 


Charles announces — 


Charles. — Mrs. Bonnington ! [Enter Mrs. Bonnington.] 

Mrs. B. — How do you do. Lady Kicklebury ? 

Lady K. — My dear Mrs. Bonnington ! and you come to 
dinner of course ? 

Mrs. B. — To dine with my own son, I may take the liberty. 
How are my grandchildren ? my darling little Emily, is she 
well', Mrs. Prior. 

Lady K. [aside']. — Emily? why does she not call the child 
by her blessed mother’s name of Arabella? [7}) Mrs. B.] 
'Arabella is quite well, Mrs. Bonnington. Mr. Squillings said 
it was nothing ; only her grandmamma Bonnington spoiling her, 
as usual. Mr. Bonnington and all your numerous young folk 
are well, I hope ? 

Mrs. B. — My family are all in perfect health, I thank you. 
Is Llorace come home from the City? 

Lady K. — Goodness ! there’s the dinner-bell, — I must run 
to dress. 

Mrs. Prior. — Shall T come with you, dear Lady Kickle* 


Till' WOLVES AXE THE LAME. 


630 

Lady K. — Not for worlds, my ^ood Mrs. Prior, [/dr// 
Lady K.] 

Mrs. Prior. — How do you do, my mudam ? Is dear 
Mr.' Bonn ington ^////^ well What a sweet, sweet sermon he 
gave us last Sunday. 1 often say to my girl, i must not go to 
hear Mr. Bonnington, I really must not, he makes me cry so. 
Oh ! he is a great and gifted man, and .shall I not have one 
glimpse of him ? 

Mrs. B. — Saturday evening, my good Mrs. Prior. Doivt 
you know that my husband never goes out on Saturday, Iiaving 
his sermon to compose ? 

Mrs. P. — Oh, those dear, dear sermons ! Do you know, 
madam, that my little Adolphus, for whom your son’s bounty 
procured liis place at Christ’s Hospital, was very much touched 
indeed, the dear child, with Mr. Bennington’s discourse last 
Sunday three weeks, and refused to play marbles afterwards at 
school.^ The wicked, naughty boys beat the poor child ; but 
Adolphus has his consolation ! Is Master Edward well, ma’am, 
and Master Robert, and Master Frederick, and dear little funny 
Master William ? 

Mrs. B. — Thank you, Mrs. Prior ; you have a good heart, 
indeed ! 

Mrs. P. — Ah, what blessings those dears are to you ! I 
wish your dearest little grandsofi 

Mrs. B. — The little naughty wretch ! Do you know, Mrs. 
Prior, my grandson, George Milliken, spilt the ink over my 
dear husband’s bands, which he keeps in his great dictionary ; 
and fought with my child, Frederick, who is three years older 
than George — actually beat his own uncle ! 

Mrs. P. — Gracious mercy ! Master Frederick was not hurt, 

I hope ? 

Mrs. B. — No ; he cried a great deal ; and then Robert dame 
up, and that graceless little George took a stick ; and then my 
husband came out, and do you know George Milliken actually 
kicked Mr. Bonnington on his shins, and butted him like a ‘ 
little naughty ram ? 

Mrs. P. — Mercy ! mercy ! what a little rebel ! He is 
spoiled, dear madam, and you know by icdiom. 

Mrs. B. — By his grandmamma Kicklebury. I know it. I 
w^ant my son to whip that child, but he refuses. He will come 
to no good, that child. 

Mrs. P. — Ah, madam ! don’t say so ! Let us hope for the 
best. Master George’s high temper will subside when certain 
persons who pet him are gone away. 


THE WOLVES AND TILE LAMB . 63 1 

Mrs. B . — Gone away! they never will go away ! No, mark 
my words, Mrs. Prior, that woman will never go away. She 
has made the house her own : she commands everything and 
everybody in it. She has driven me — me — Mr. Milliken’s own 
mother — almost out of it. She has so annoyed my dear hus- 
band, that Mr. Bonnington will scarcely come here. Is she 
not always sneering at private tutors, because Mr. Bonnington 
was my son’s private tutor, and greatly valued by the late Mr. 
Milliken ? Is she not making constant allusions to old women 
marrying voting men, because Mr. Bonnington happens to be 
younger than me ? 1 have no words to express my indignation 

respecting Lady Kicklebury. She never pays any one, and 
runs up debts in the whole town^ Herman Bulkeley’s conduct 
ill the neighborhood is quite — quite 

Mrs. B. — Gracious goodness, ma’am, you don’t, say so ! 
And then what an appetite the gormandizing monster has ! 
Mary tells me that what he eats in the servants’ hall is some- 
thing perfectly frightful: 

Mrs. B. — Everybody feeds on my poor son I You are 
looking at my cap, Mrs. Prior ? [^During t /its time Mrs. Prior 
has been pcefang into a parcel ivhich Mrs. Bonnington brought in 
her ha?id.\ I brought it with me across the Park. I could not 
walk through the Park in my cap. Isn’t it a pretty ribbon, 
Mrs. Prior 

Mrs. P. — Beautiful ! beautiful ! How blue becomes you ! 
Who would think you were the mother of IMr. Milliken and 
seven other darling children ? You can afford what Lady 
Kicklebury cannot. 

Mrs. 13 . — And what is that. Prior ? A poor clergyman's 
wife, with a large family, cannot afford much. 

Mrs. P. — He I he ! You can afford to be seen as you are, 
which Lady K. cannot. Did you not remark ho’w afraid she 
seemed lest I should enter her dressing-room Only Pinhorn, 
her maid, goes there, to arrange the roses, and the lilies, and 
the figure — he 1 he I Oh, what a sweet, sweet cap-ribbon ! When 
you have worn it, and are tired of it, you will give it me, won’t 
you.^ It will be good enough for poor old Martha Prior ! 

Mrs. B. — Do you feally like it Call at Greenwood Place, 
Mrs. Prior, the next time you pay Richmond a visit, and bring 
your little girl with you, and we will s^e. 

Mrs. P. — Oh, thank you ! thank you ! Nay, don’t be of- . 
fended ! I must ! I must ! [Kisses Mrs. Bonnington.] 

Mrs. B. — There, there ! We must not stay chattering I 
The bell has rung. 1 must go and put the cap on, Mrs. Prior. 


632 


THE EVOLVES AND THE LAMB 


Mrs. P. — And I may come, too ? You are not afraid of 
my seeing your hair, dear Mrs. Bonnington ! Mr. Bonnington 
too young ior you ! Why, you don’t look twenty ! 

Mrs. B. — Oh, Mrs. Prior! 

Mrs. P. — Well, hve-and -twenty, upon my word — not more 
than five and-twenty — and that is the very prime of life 1 [Ex- 
eunt Mrs. B. and Mrs. P. hand in hand. As Captain Touchit 
enters dressed for dinner., he ho7vs and passes on?\ 

Touchit. — So, we are to wear our white cravats, and our 
varnished boots, and dine in ceremony. What is the use of a 
man being a widower, if he can’t dine in his shooting-jacket } 
Poor Mill 1 He has the slavery now without the wife. \He 
speaks sarcastically to the picture*!] Well, well I Mrs. Milliken ! 
You, at any rate, are gone ; and, with the utmost respect for 
you, I like your picture even better than the original. Miss 
Prior 1 


Enter Miss Prior. 

Miss Prior. — I beg pardon. I thought you. were gone to 
dinner. I heard the second bell some time since. [A//<? is 
drawing hackl\ 

Touchit. — Stop ! I say, Julia I [She returns, he looks at her, 
takes her hand?\ Why do you dress yourself in this odd poky 
way? You used to be a very smartly dressed girl. Why do 
you hide your hair, and wear such a dowdy, high gown, Julia? 

Julia. — You mustn’t call me Julia, Captain Touchit. 

Touchit. — Why ? when I lived in your mother’s lodging, I 
called you Julia. When you brought up the tea, you didn’t 
mind being called Julia. When we used to go to the play with 
the tickets the Editor gave us, who lived on the second 
floor 

Julia. — The wretch ! — don’t speak of him ! 

Touchit. — Ah 1 I am afraid he was a sad deceiver, that 
Editor. He was a very clever fellow. What droll songs he 
used to sing ! What a heap of play-tickets, diorama-tickets, 
concert-tickets, he used to give you I Did he touch your heart, 
Julia ? 

Julia. — Fiddlededee I No man ever touched my heart, 

Captain Touchit. 

Touchit. — What 1 not even Tom Flight, who had the 
second floor after the Editor left it — and who cried so bitterly 
at the idea of going out to India without you ? You had a 
tendre for him — a little passion — you know you had. Why, 


THE WOL VES AHD THE LAMB. 


633 

even the ladies here know it. Mrs. Bonnington told me that 
you were waiting for a sweetheart in India, to whom you were 
engaged ; and Lady Kicklebury thinks you are dying in love 
for the absent swain. 

Julia. — I hope — I hope — ^you did not contradict them, Cap- 
tain Touchit. 

Touchit. — Why not, my dear ? 

Julia. — May I be frank with you ? You were a kind, very 
kind friend to us — to me, in my youth. 

Touchit. — I paid my lodgings regularly, and my bills with- 
out asking questions. I never weighed the tea in the caddy, or 
counted the lumps of sugar, or heeded the rapid consumption 
of my liqueur 

Julia. — Hush, hush ! I know they were taken. I know 
you were very good to us. You helped my poor papa out of 
many a difficulty. 

Touchit \aside\, — Tipsy old coal merchant ! I did, and he 
helped himself too. 

Julia. — And you were always our best friend, Captain 
Touchit. When our misfortunes came, you got me this situa- 
tion with Mrs. Milliken — and, and — don’t you see ? 

Touchit — Well — what ? 

• Julia [laughing]. — I think it is best, under the circum- 
stances, that the ladies here should suppose I am engaged to 
be married — or — or, they might be — might be jealous, you un- 
derstand. Women are sometimes jealous of others, — especially 
mothers and mothers-in-law. 

Touchit. — Oh, you arch-schemer ! And it is for that you 
cover up that beautiful hair of yours, and wear that demure 
cap } 

Julia [slyly], — I am subject to rheumatism in the head, 
Captain Touchit. 

Touchit. — It is for that you put on the spectacles, and 
make yourself look a hundred years old ? 

Julia. — My eyes are weak, Captain Touchit. 

Touchit. — Weak with weeping for Tom Flight. You hypo- 
crite ! Show me your eyes ? 

Miss P. — Nonsense ! 

Touchit. — Show me your eyes, I say, or I’ll tell about Tom 
Flight, and that he has been married at Madras these two 
years. 

Miss P. — Oh, you horrid man ! [takes glasses offi] There. 

Touchit. — Translucent orbs! beams of flashing light! 
lovely lashes veiling celestial brightness ! No, they haven’t 


TffE WOLVES AND THE LAMB. 


634 

cried much for Tom Flight, that faithless captain I nor for Law- 
rence O’Reilly, that killing Editor. It is lucky you keep the 
glasses on them, or they would transfix Horace Milliken, my 
friend the widower here. Do you always wear them when you 
are alone with him ? 

Miss P. — I never am alone with him. Bless me ! If Lady 
Kicklebury thought my eyes were — well, well — you know what 
I mean, — if she thought her son-in-law looked at me, I should 
be turned out of doors the next day, I am sure I should. And 
then, poor Mr. Milliken ! he never looks at me — heaven help 
him ! Why, he can’t see me for her ladyship’s nose and awful 
caps and ribbons ! He sits and looks at the portrait yopder, 
and sighs so. He thinks that he is lost in grief for his wife at 
this very moment. 

Touchit. — What a woman that was — eh, Julia — that de 
parted angel ! What a temper she had before her departure ! 

Miss P. — But the wind was tempered to the lamb. If she 
was angry — the lamb was so veiy lamblike, and meek, and 
fleecy. 

Touchit. — And what a desperate flirt the departed angel 
was ! I knew half a dozen fellows, before her marriage, whom 
she threw over, because Milliken was so rich. 

Miss P. — She was consistent at least, and did not change 
after marriage, as some ladies do,; but flirted, as you call it, 
just as much as before. At Paris, young Mr. Verney, the at- 
tachd, was never out of the house : at Rome, Mr. Beard, the 
artist, was always drawing pictures of her: at Naples, when 
poor Mr. M. went away to look after his affairs at St. Peters- 
burg, little Count Posilippo was forever coming to learn 
English and practise duets. She scarcely ever saw the poor 
children — [changing her manfier as Lady Kicklebury efite7's'\ 
Hush — my lady I 

Touchit. — You may well say, ‘‘poor children,” deprived 
of such a woman 1 Miss Prior, whom I knew in very early 
days — as your ladyship knows — was speaking — was speaking 
of the loss our poor friend sustained. 

Lady K. — Ah, sir, what a loss ! [looking at the pictu7'e?\ 

Touchit. — What a woman she was — what a superior crea- 
ture ! 

Lady K. — A creature — an angel ! 

Touchit. — Mercy upon us I how she and my lady used to ' 
quarrel ! \_asidei\ What a temper ! 

Lady K. — Hm — oh, yes — what a temper [rather doubtfully 
at frst]. 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB. 


Touchit. — What a loss to Milliken and the darling 
children ! 

Miss Prior. — Luckily they have you with them, madam. 

Lady K. — And I will stay with them, Miss Prior ; I will 
stay with them ! I will never part from Horace, I am de- 
termined. 

Miss P. — Ah ! I am very glad you stay, for if I had not you 
for a protector I think you know 1 must go, Lady Kicklebury. I 
think you know there are those who would forget my attach- 
ment to these darling children, my services to — to her — and 
dismiss the poor governess. But while you stay I can stay, 
clear Lady Kicklebury ! With you to defend me from jealousy 
I need not quiteho afraid. 

Lady K. — Of Mrs. Bonnington ? Of Mr. Milliken’s mother \ 
of the parson^s wife who writes out his stupid sermons, and has 
half a dozen children of her own } I should think not indeed ! 
I am the natural protector of these children. I am their 
mother, /have no husband! You stay \n this house. Miss 
Prior. You are a faithful, attached creature — though you were 
sent in by somebody I don’t like very much \j)ointing to 
Touchit, who went off laughing when Julia began her speech.^ 
and is now looJzing at pi'ints.^ in the next room]. 

Miss P. — Captain Touchit may not be in all things what 
one could wish. But his kindness has formed the happiness of 
my life in making me acquainted with you, ma’am : and I am 
sure you would not have me be ungrateful to him. 

Lady K. — A most highly principled young woman [<7oes out 
i, gardefi and walks up and down with Captain Touchit.] 

Enter Mrs. Bonnington. 

Miss P. — Oh, how glad I am you are come, Mrs. Bonning- 
ton. Have you brought me that pretty hymn you promised me ? 
You always keep your promises, even to poor governesses. I 
read dear Mr. Bonnington’s sermon 1 It was so interesting that 
1 really could not think of going to sleep until I had read it all 
through ; it was delightful, but oh 1 it’s still better when he 
preaches it 1 I hope I did not do wrong in copying a part of it ? 
[ wish to impress it on the children. There are some worldly 
influences at work with them, dear madam [looking at Lady 
K. in the garden], which I do my feeble effort to — to modify. 
I wish you could come oftener. 

Mrs. B. — T will try, my dear — I will try. Emily has sweet 
dispositions. i 


636 the wolves and the lame, 

Mrs. P. — Ah, she takes after her grandmamma Bonning 
ton ! 

Mrs. B. — But George was sadly fractious just now in the 
schoolroom because I tried him with a tract. 

Miss P. — Let us hope for better times ! Do be with your 
children, dear Mrs. Bonnington, as constantly as ever you can, 
for 7?iy sake as well as theirs 1 I want protection and advice as 
well as they do. The governess^ dear lady, looks up to you as 
well as the pupils ; she wants the teaching which you and dear 
Mr. Bonnington can give her ! Ah, why could not Mr. and 
Mrs. Bonnington come and live here, I often think ? The 
children would have companions in their dear young uncles 
and aunts ; so pleasant it would be. The house is quite large 
enough ; that is, if her ladyship did not occupy the three south 
rooms in the left wing. Ah, why, why couldn’t you come ? 

Mrs. B. — You are a kind, affectionate creature. Miss Prior. 
I do not very much like the gentleman who recommended you 
to Arabella, you know. But I do think he sent my son a good 
governess for his children. 

Two Ladies walk up and down in front garden, 

Touchit enters, 

Touchit. — Miss Julia Prior, you are a wonder ! I watch 
you with respect and surprise. 

Miss P. — Me ! what have I done ? a poor friendless gover- 
ness — respect me ? 

Touchit. — I have a mind to tell those two ladies what I 
think of Miss Julia Prior. If they knew you as I know you, O 
Julia Prior, what a short reign yours would be ! 

Miss P. — I have to manage them a little. Each separately 
it is not so difficult. But when they are together, oh, it is very 
hard sometimes. 

Enter Milliken dressed^ shakes hands with Miss P. 

Milliken. — Miss Prior ! are you well ? Have the children 
been good ? and learned all their lessons ? 

Miss P. — The children are pretty good, sir. 

Milliken. — Well, that’s a great deal as times go. Do not 
bother them with too much learning, Miss Prior. Let them 
have an easy life. Time enough for trouble when age comes. 

Efiter John. 

John. — Dinner, sir. \A7id exitl\ 


THE^tVOLVES AND THE LAMB. 


<^37 

Milliken. — Dinner, ladies. My Lady Kicklebury {£ivei 
ar7n to Lady K). 

Lady K. — My dear Horace, you shouhbi’t shake hands with 
Miss Prior. You should keep people of that class at a dis- 
tance, my dear creature. \They go in to dmnet\ Captain Tou- 
ch it Mrs. Bonnington. As they go out, enter 

Mary with children's tea-tray, &^c., childreii followmg, and after 
them Mrs. Prior. Mary gives her teal\ 

Mrs. Prior. — Thank you, Mary ! You are so very kind ! 
Oh, what delicious tea ! 

Georgy. — I say, Mrs. Prior, I dare say you would like to 
dine best, wouldn’t you ? 

“Mrs. P. — Bless you, my darling love, I had my dinner at 
one o’clock with my children at home. 

Georgy. — So had we : but we go in to -dessert very often ; 
and then don’t we have cakes and oranges and candied-peel 
and macaroons and things ! We are not to go in to-day ; be- 
cause Bella ate so many strawberries she made herself ill. 

Bella. — So did you. 

Georgy. — I’m a man, and men eat more than women, twice 
as much as women. When I’m a man I’ll eat as much cake as 
ever I like. I say, Mary, give us the marmalade. 

Mrs. P. — Oh, what nice marmalade ! I know of some 
poor children 

Miss P. — Mamma ! don’t mamma \in an imploring tone\. 

Mrs. P. — I know of two poor children at home, who have 
very seldom nice marmalade and cake, young people. 

George. — You mean Adolphus and Frederick and Amelia, 
your children. Well, they shall have marmalade and cake. 

Bella. — Oh, yes ! I’ll give them mine. 

Mrs. P. — Darling, dearest child ! 

George ( his mouth full). — I wont give ’em mine : but they 
can have another jDot, you know. You have always got a 
basket with you, Mr. Prior. I know you have. You had it that 
day you took the cold fowl. 

Mrs. P. — For the poor blind black man ! oh, how thankful 
he was ! 

George. — I don’t know whether it was for a black man. 
Mary, get us another pot of marmalade. 

Mary. — I don’t know. Master George. 

George. — I will have another pot of marmalade. If you 
don’t. I’ll — I’ll smash everything — I will. 

Bella. — Oh, you naughty, rude boy ! 

George. — Hold your tongue ! I will have it. Mary shall go 
and get it. 


638 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB, 


Mrs. P. — Do humor him, Mary ; and I’m sure my poor 
children at home will be the better for it. 

George. — There’s your basket ! now put this cake in, and 
this pat of butter, and this sugar. Hurray, hurray ! Oh, what 
jolly fun ! Tell Adolphus and Amelia I sent it to them — tell ’em 
they shall never want for anything as long as George Kickle- 
bury Milliken, Esq., can give it ’em. Did Adolphus like my 
gray coat that I didn’t want ? 

Miss P. — You did not give him your new gray coat ? 

George. — Don’t you speak to me; I’m going to school — 
I’m not going to have no more governesses soon. 

Mrs. P. — Oh, my dear Master George, what a nice coat it 
is, and how-well my poor boy looked in it ! 

Miss P. — Don’t, mamma ! I pray and entreat you not to 
take the things ! 

E7iter John fro7fi ditimg-roo77i zvith a tray. 

John. — Some cream, some jelly, a little champagne. Miss 
Prior ; I thought you might like some. 

George. — Oh, jolly ! give us hold of the jelly ! give us a 
glass of champagne. 

John. — I will not give you an)^ 

George. — I’ll smash every glass in the room if you don’t ; 
I’ll cut my fingers; I’ll pois'on myself — there! I’ll eat all this 
sealing-wax if you don’t, and it’s rank poison, you know it is. 

Mrs. P. — My dear Master George ! \_Exit John.] 

George. — Ha, ha ! I knew you’d give it me ; another boy 
taught me that. 

Bella. — And a very naughty, rude boy. 

George. — He, he,, he I hold your tongue. Miss 1 And said 
he always got wine so ; and so I used to do it to my poor mam- 
ma, Miss Prior. Usedn’t to like mamma much. 

Bella. — Oh, you wicked boy ! 

George. — She usedn’t to see us much. She used to say I 
tired her nerves : what’s nerves. Miss Prior ? Give us some 
more champagne 1 Will have it. Ha, ha, ha ! ain’t it jolly 
Now I’ll go out and have a run in the garden. \Rims into 
gar del r\, 

Mrs. P. — And you, my dear ? 

Bella. — I shall go and resume the perusal of the “ Pilgrim’s 
Progress,” which my grandpapa, Mr. Bonnington, sent me. 
\_Exit Arabella.] 

Miss P. — How those children are spoilt ! Goodness, what 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB. 


639 

can I do ? If I correct one, he flies to grandmamma Kicklebury ; 
if I speak to another, she appeals to grandmamma Bonnington. 
When I was alone with them, I had them in something like 
order. Now, between the one grandmother and the other, the 
children are going to ruin, and so would the house too, but that 
Howell — that odd, rude, but honest and. intelligent creature, I 
must say — keeps it up. It is wonderful how a person in his 
rank of life should have instructed himself so. He really 
knows — I really think he knows more than I do myself. 

Mrs. P. — Julia dear! 

Miss P.— What is it, mamma? 

Mrs. P. — Your little sister wants some underclothing sadly, 
Julia dear,* and poor Adolphus’s shoes are quite worn out. 

Miss P. — I thought so ; I have given you all I could, 
mamma. 

Mrs. P. — Yes, my love ! you are a good love, and gener- 
ous, heaven knows, to your poor old mother who has seen bet- 
ter days. If we had not wanted, would I have ever allowed you 
to be a governess — a poor degraded governess ? If that brute 
O’Reilly who lived on our second floor had not behaved so 
shamefully wicked fo you, and married Miss Flack, the singer, 
might you not have been Editress of the Cha7?ipion of Liher'ty 
at this very moment, and had your Opera box every night ? 
\^She d^'mks champagne while talking.^ and excites her self \. 

Miss P. — Don’t take that, mamma. 

Mrs. P. — Don’t take it ? why, it costs nothing ; Milliken 
can afford it. Do you suppose I get champagne every day ? I 
might have had it as a girl when I first married your father, 
and we kep’ our gig and horse, and lived at Clapham, and had 
the best of everything. But the coal trade is not what it was, 
Julia, and we met with misfortunes, Julia, and we went into 
poverty : and your poor father went into the Bench for twenty- 
three months — two year all but a month he did — and my 
poor girl was obliged to dance at the “ Coburg Theatre ” — 
yes, you were, at ten shillings a week, in the Oriental ballet of 
“ The Bulbul and the Rose : ” you were, my poor darling child. 

Miss P.— HusJi, hush, mamma ! 

Mrs. P. — And we kep’ a lodging-house in Bury Street, St. 
James’s, which your father’s brother furnished for us, who was 
an extensive oil merchant. He brought you up ; and afterwards 
he quarrelled with my poor James, Robert Prior did, and he 
died, not leaving us a shilling. And my dear eldest boy went 
into a wine-mercli ant’s office : and my poor darling Julia became 
a governess, when you had had the best of education at Clap- 


640 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB, 


ham ; you had, Julia. And to think that you were obliged, my 
blessed thing, to go on in the Oriental ballet of The Rose 
and tlie Bui ” 

jMiss P. — Mamma, hush, hush ! forget that story. 

E7ite}‘ Page f7‘om di7img-roo77i. 

Page. — Miss Prior ! please, the ladies are coming from ihe. 
dining-room. Mrs. B. have had her two glasses of port, and 
her ladyship is now a-telling the story about the Prince of Wale:, 
when she danced with him at Carlton House. [Exd Page.] 

Miss P. — Quick, quick ! There, take your basket ! Put on 
your bonnet, and good-night, mamma. Here, here .is a half- 
sovereign and three shillings ; it is all the money I have in the 
world ; take it, and buy the shoes for Adolphus. 

Mrs. P.— And the underclothing, my love — little Amelia's 
underclothing ? 

Miss P. — We will see about it. Good-night [kisses /ie7']. 
Don’t be seen here, — Lady K. doesn't like it. 

ETiter Gentlemen and Ladies fro7n dini7ig-7V07n, 

Lady K. — We follow the' Continental fashion. We don^t 
sit after dinner. Captain Touch it. 

Captain T. — Confound the Continental fashion ! I like to 
sit a little while after dinner [aside\ 

Mrs. B. — So does my dear Mr. Bonnington, Captain Touch- 
it. He likes a little port-wine after dinner. 

Touchit. — Tm not surprised at it, ma’am. 

Mrs. B.— When did you say your son was coming. Lady 
Kicklebury ? 

Lady K. — My Clarence ! He will be here immediately, I 
hope, the dear boy. You know my Clarence.^ 

Touchit. — Yes, ma’am. 

Lady K. — And like him, I’m sure. Captain Touchit ! Every- 
body does like Clarence Kicklebury. 

Touchit. — The confounded young scamp ! I ^ay, Horace, 
do you like your brother-in-law ? 

Milliken. — Well — I — I can’t say — I — like him — in fact, I 
don’t. But that’s no reason why his mother shouldn’t. [Dti7'i7ig 
this^ Howell preceded by Bulkeley, ha7ids rotmd coffee. The 
garde7i without has darkened., as of cve7ii7ig. Bulkeley is gomg 
away without offef'big coffee to Miss Prior. John stairips on his 
foot^ a7id points to her. Captain Touchit lai^ghmg, goes tip and 
talks to her 7iow the serva7its are gonel\ 


THE WOL FES AND THE LAMB. 64 ! 

Mrs. B. — Horace I I must tell you that the waste at your 
table is shocking. What is the need of opening all this wine ? 
You and Lady Kicklebury were the only persons who took 
champagne. 

Touchit. — I never drink it — never touch the rubbish ! Tod 
old a stager ! 

Lady K. — Port, I think, is your favorite, Mrs. Bonnington ? 

Mrs. B. — My dear lady, I do not mean that you should not 
have champagne, if you like. Pray, pray, don’t be angry ! But 
why on earth, for you, who take so little, and Horace, wlio only 
drinks it to keep you company, should not Howell open a pint 
instead of a great large bottle 

Lady K. — Oh, Howell ! Howell ! We must not mention 
Howell, my dear Mrs. Bonnington. Howell is faultless. Howell 
has the keys of everything ! Howell is not to be controlled in 
anything ! Howell is to be at liberty to be rude to my servant ! 

Milliken. — Is that all ? I am sure I should have thought 
your man was big enough to resent any rudeness from poor little 
Howell. 

Lady K. — Horace ! Excuse me for saying that you don’t 
know — the — the class of servant to whom Bulkeley belongs. I 
had him, as a great favor, from Lord Toddleby. That class of 
servant is accustomed generally not to go out single. 

Milliken. — Unless they are two behind a carriage-perch 
they pine away, as one love-bird does without his mate ! 

Lady K. — No doubt ! no doubt ! I only say you are not 
accustomed here — in this kind of establishment, you understand 
— to that class of 

Mrs. B. — Lady Kicklebury ! is my son’s establishment not 
good enough for any powdered monster in England ? Is the 
house of a British merchant ? 

Lady K. — My dear creature ! my dear creature ! it is the 
house of a British merchant, and a very comfortable house. 

Mrs. B. — Yes, as you find it. 

Lady K. — Yes, as I find it, when I come to take care of 
my departed angel’s children, Mrs. Bonnington — {^pointing to 
pictur^ — of that dear seraph’s orphans, Mrs. Bonnington. You 
cannot. You have other duties — other children — a husband 
at home in delicate health, who 

Mrs. B. — Lady Kicklebury, no one shall say I don’t take 
care of my dear husband ! 

Milliken. — My dear mother ! My dear Lady Kicklebury 1 
\To T., who has come forward?^ They spar so every night they 
meet, Touchit. Ain’t it hard ? 


642 


THE WOL VES AND THE LAMB. 


Lady K. — I say you do take care of Mr. Bonnington, Mrs. 
Bonnington, my dear creature ! and that is why you can't attend 
to Horace. And as he is of a very easy temper — except some- 
times with his poor Arabella’s mother — he allows all his trades- 
men to cheat him, all his servants to cheat him, Howell to be 
rude to everybody — to me amongst other people, and why not 
to my servant Bulkeley, with whom Lord Toddleby’s groom of 
the chambers gave me the very highest character. 

Mrs. B. — I’m surprised that noblemen grooms in their 
chambers. I should think they were much better in the stables. 
I am sure I always think so when we dine with Doctor Clinker. 
His man does bring such a smell of the stable with him. 

Lady K. — He ! he ! you mistake, my dearest creature 1 
Your poor mother mistakes, my good Horace. You have lived 
in a quiet and most respectable sphere — but not — ^^not 

Mrs. B. — Not what, Lady Kicklebury.? We have lived at 
Richmond twenty years — in my late husband’s time — when we 
saw a great deal of company, and when this dear Horace was 
a dear boy at Westminster School. And we have paid for 
everything we have had for tw'enty years, and we have owed 
not a penny to any irades7na7i^ mayn’t have had 

p07udered foot7nen six feet high, who were impertinent to all the 
maids in the place Don’t! I will speak, Horace — but ser- 

vants who loved us, and who lived in our families. 

Milliken. — Mamma, now, my dear, good old mother ! I 
ani sure Lady Kicklebury meant no harm. 

Lady K. — Me I my dear Horace I harm 1 What harm 
could I mean 't 

Milliken. — Come 1 let us have a game at whist. Touchit, 
will you make a fourth? They go on so every night almost. 
Ain’t it a pity, now ? 

Touchit. — Miss Prior generally plays, doesn’t she ? 

Milliken. — And a very good player, too. But I thought 
you might like it. 

Touchit. — Well, not exactly. I don’t like sixpenny points, 
Horace, or quarrelling with old dragons about the odd trick. 
I will go and smoke a cigar on the terrace, and contemplate 
the silver Thames, the darkling woods, the starry hosts of 
heaven. I — I like smoking better than playing whist. [Mil- 
liken rmgs he//.] 

Milliken. — Ah, George 1 you’re not fit for domestic fe- 
licity. 

Touchit. — N o, not exactly. 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB, 643 

PIowELL enters, 

Milliken. — Lights and a whist-table. Oh, I see you bring 
’em. You know everything I want. He knows everything I 
want, Howell does. Let us cut. Miss Prior, you and I are 
partners ! 


ACT II. 

Scene. — As before. 

Lady K. — Don’t smoke, you naughty boy. I don’t like it. 
Besides it will encourage your brother-in-law to smoke. 

Clarence K. — Anything to oblige you. I’m sure. But 
can’t do without it, mother ; it’s good for my health. When I 
was in the Plungers, our doctor used to say, ‘‘You ought never 
to smoke more than eight cigars a day ” — an order, you know, 
to do it — don’t you see } 

Lady K. — Ah, my child ! I am very glad you are not with 
those unfortunate people in the East. 

K. — So am I. Sold out just in time. Much better fun 
being here, than having the cholera at Scutari. Nice house, 
Milliken’s. Snob, but good fellow — good cellar, doosid good 
cook. Really that salmi yesterday, — couldn’t have it better 
done at the “Rag” now. You have got into good quarters 
here, mother. 

Lady K. — The meals are very good, and the house is very 
good ; the manners are not of the first order. But what can 
you expect of city people ? I always told your poor dear sister, 
when she married Mr. Milliken, that she might look for every- 
thing substantial, — but not manners. Poor dear Arabella 
would marry him. 

K. — Would ! that is a good one, mamma ! Why, you made 
her ! It’s a dozen years ago. But I recollect, when I came 
home from Eton, seeing her crying because Charley Tufton 

Lady K. — Mr. Tufton had not a shilling to bless himself 
with. The marriage was absurd and impossible. 

K. — He hadn’t a shilling then. I guess he has plenty now. 
Elder brother killed, out hunting. Father dead. Tuf a baro- 
net, with four thousand a year if he’s a shilling. 


644 


THE WOL T’ES AA’V THE LAMB. 


Lady K. — Not so much. 

K.-^Foiir thousand if it’s a shilling. Why, the property 
adjoins Kicklebury's — I ought to know. I’ve shot over it a 
thousand times. Heh ! /‘remember, when I was quite a young 
’un, how Arabella used to go out into Tufton Park to meet 
Charluy — and he is a doosid good fellow, and a gentlemanlike 
fellow, and a doosid deal better than this city fellow. 

Lady K. — If yoti don’t like this city fellow, Clarence, why 
do you come here ? why didn’t you stop with your elder brother 
at Kicklebury? 

K. — Why didn’t I Why didn’t you stop at Kicklebury, 
mamma ? Because you had notice to quit. Serious daughter- 
in-law, quarrels about management of the house — row in the 
building. My brother interferes, and politely requests mamma 
to shorten her visit. So it is with your other two daughters ; 
so it was with Arabella when she was alive. What shindies 
you used to have with her. Lady Kicklebury ! Heh ! I had a 
row with my brother and sister about a confounded little 
nursery-maid. 

Lady K.-^Clarence 1 

K. — And so I had notice to quit too. And I’m in very 
good quarters here, and I intend to stay in ’em, mamma. I 
say 

Lady K. — What do you say. 

K. — Since I sold out, you know, and the regiment went 
abroad, confound me, the brutes at the Rag ” will hardly 
speak to me ! I was so ill I couldn’t go. Who the doose can 
live the life I’ve led and keep health enough for that infernal 
Crimea ? Besides, how could I help it 't I was so cursedly in 
debt that I^was obliged to have the money, you know. You 
hadn’t got any. 

Lady K. — Not a halfpenny, my darling. I am dreadfully 
in debt myself. 

K. — I know you are. So am 1. My brother wouldn’t give 
me any, not a dump. Hang him I Said he had his children to 
look to. Milliken wouldn’t advance me any more — said I did 
him in that horse transaction. He ! he ! he ! so I did ! What 
had I to do but to sell out ? And the fellows cut me, by Jove. 
Ain’t it too bad ? I’ll take my name off the ‘‘ Rag,” I will, 
though. 

Lady K. — We must sow our wild oats, and we must sober 
down ; and we must live here, where the living is very good 
and very cheap, Clarence, you naughty boy ! And we must 
get you a rich wife. Did you see at church yesterday that 


THE WOL VES AND THE LAMB. 645 

young woman in light-green, with rather red hair and a pink- 
bonnet ? 

K. — I was asleep, ma^am, most of the time, or I was bookin’ 
up the odds for the Chester Cup. When I’m bookin’ up, I 
think of nothin’ else, ma’am, nothin’. 

Lady K. — That was Miss Brocksopp — Briggs, Brown and 
Brocksopp, the great sugar-bakers. They say she will have 
eighty thousand pound. We will ask her to dinner here. 

K. — I say — why the doose do you have such old women to 
dinner here Why don’t you get some pretty girls 'i Such a 
set of confounded old frumps as eat Milliken’s mutton I never 
saw. There’s you, and his old mother Mrs. Bonnington, and 
old Mrs. Fogram, and old Miss What’s-her-name, the woman 
with the squint eye, and that immense Mrs. Crowder. It’s so 
stoopid, that if it weren’t for Touchit coming down sometimes, 
and the billiards and boatin’, I should die here — expire, by gad ! 
Why don’t you have some pretty women into the house. Lady 
Kicklebury 1 

Lady K. — Why ! Do you think I want that picture taken 
down : and another Mrs. Milliken ? Wisehead ! If Horace 
married again, would he be your banker, and keep this house, 
now that ungrateful son of mine has turned me out of his 
No pretty woman shall come into the house whilst I am here. 

K. — Governess seems a pretty woman : weak eyes, bad 
figure, poky, badly dressed, but doosid pretty woman. 

Lady K. — Bah! There is no danger from She is a 
most faithful creature, attached to me beyond everything. And 
her eyes — her eyes are weak with crying for some young man 
who is in India. She has his miniature in her room, locked up 
in one of her drawers. 

K. — Then how the doose did you come to see it ? 

Lady K. — We see a number of things, Clarence. Will you 
drive with me ? 

K. — Not as I knows on, thank you. No, Ma ; drivin’s too 
slow : and you’re goin’ to call on two or three old dowagers in 
the Park ? Thank your ladyship for the delightful offer. 

Enter John. 

John. — Please, sir, here’s the man with the bill for the 
boats ; two pound three. 

K. — Damn it, pay it — don’t bother me ! 

John. — Haven’t got the money, sir. 

Lady K. — Howell ! I saw Mr. Milliken give you a check 


646 the wolves and the lamb, 

for twenty-five pounds before he went into town this morning. 
Look, sir [r/z/zj*, opens the drawer,, takes out check-bo ok\ There 
it is, marked, “ Howell, 25/.’’ 

John. — Would your ladyship like to step down into my 
pantry and see what IVe paid with the twenty-five pounds ? 
Did my master leave any orders that your ladyship was to 
inspect my accounts ^ 

Lady K. — Step down into the pantry ! inspect your ac- 
counts ? I never heard such impertinence. What do you 
mean, sir ? 

K. — Dammy, sir, what do you mean ? 

John. — I thought as her ladyship kept a heye over my 
master’s private book, she might like to look at mine too. 

Lady K. — Upon my word, this insolence is too much. 

John. — I beg your ladyship’s pardon. I am sure I have said 
nothing. 

K. — Said, sir 1 your manner is mutinous, by Jove, sir ! If I 
had you in the regiment ! 

John. — I understood that you had left the regiment, sir, 
just before it went on the campaign, sir. 

K. — Confound you, sir 1 [Sta/Ls up.'] 

Lady K. — Clarence, my child, my child ! 

John. — Your ladyship needn’t be alarmed ; I’m a little man, 
my lady, but I don’t think Mr. Clarence was a-goin’ for to hit 
me, my lady ; not before a lady, I’m sure. I suppose, sir, that 
you won't pay the boatman? 

K. — No, sir, I won’t pay him, nor any man who uses this 
sort of damned impertinence ! 

John. — I told Rullocks, sir, I thought it was just possible 
you wouldn’t. \Exit?\ , 

K. — That’s a nice man, that is — an impudent villain ! 

Lady K. — Ruined by Horace’s weakness. He ruins every- 
body, poor good-natured Horace ! 

K. — Why don’t you get rid of the blackguard ? 

Lady K. — There is a time for all things, my dear. This 
man is very convenient to Horace. Mr. Milliken is exceedingly 
lazy, and Howell spares him a great deal of trouble. Some 
day or other I shall take all this domestic trouble off his hands. 
But not yet : your poor brother-in-law is restive, like many weak 
men. He is subjected to other influences : his odious mother 
thwarts me a great deal. 

K — Why, you used to be the dearest friends in the world. 
1 recollect when I was at Eton 

Lady K. — Were ; but friendship don’t last forever. Mrs. 


THE WOL FES AND THE LAMB. 647 

Bennington and I have had s-erious differences since I came to 
live here : she has a natural jealousy, perhaps, at my superin- 
tending her son’s affairs. When she ceases to visit at the 
house, as she very possibly will, things will go more easily; 
and Mr. Howell will go too, you may depend upon it. I am 
always sorry when my temper breaks out, as it will sometimes. 

K. — Won’t it, that’s all ! 

Lady K. — At his insolence, my temper is high ; so is 
yours, my dear. Calm it for the present, especially as regards 
Howell. 

K. — Gad ! d’you know I was very nearly pitching into him ? 
But once, one night in the Haymarket, at a lobster-shop, where 
I was with some fellows, we chaffed some other fellows, and 
there was one fellah — quite a little fellah — and I pitched into 
him, and he gave me the most confounded lickin’ I ever had in 
my life, since my brother Kicklebury licked me when we were 
at Eton ; and that, you see, was a lesson to me, ma’am. Never 
trust those little fellows, never chaff ’em : dammy, they may be 
boxers. 

Lady K. — You quarrelsome boy ! I remember you coming 
home with your naughty head so bruised. \Looks at watch.] 
I must go now to take my drive. [Exit Lady K.] 

K. — I owe a doose of a tick at that billiard -room.; I shall 
have that boatman dunnin’ me. Why hasn’t Milliken got any 
horses to ride } Hang him ! suppose he can’t ride — suppose 
he’s a tailor. He ain’t my tailor though, though I owe him a 
doosid deal of money. There goes mamma with that darling 
nephew and niece of mine. [Enter Bulkeley.] Why haven’t 
you gone with my lady, you, sir ? [to Bulkeley]. 

Bulkeley. — My lady have a-took the pony-carriage, sir ; 
Mrs. Bonnington have a-took the hopen carriage and ’orses, sir, 
this mornin’, which the Bishop of London is ’olding a confir- 
mation at Teddington, sir, and Mr. Bonnington is attending the 
serimony. And I have told Mr. ’Owell, sir, that my lady would 
prefer the hopen carriage, sir, which I like the hexercise my- 
self, sir, and that the pony-carriage was good enough for Mrs. 
Bonnington, sir ; and Mr. ’Dwell was very hinsolent to me, sir; 
and I don’t think I can stay in the ’ouse with him. 

K. — Hold your jaw, sir. 

Bulkeley. — Yes, sir. [Exit Bulkeley.] • 

K. — I wonder who that governess is ? — sang rather pretty 
last night — wish she’d come and sing now— wish she’d come 
and amuse me — I’ve seen her face before — where have I seen 
her face } — it ain’t at all a bad one. What shall I do ? dammy, 


648 the wolves a ah llfE LAMB. 

I'll read a book : IVe not read a book this ever so long* 
W^hat’s here ? [looks amongst books ^ selects orie.^ sinks down in easy 
chair so as quite to be lost]. 

Enter Miss Prior. 

Miss Prior. — There’s peace in the house ! those noisy 
children are away with their grandmamma. The weather is 
beautiful, and I hope they will take a long drive. Now I can 
have a quiet half-hour, and finish that dear pretty “ Ruth ’’ — 
oh, how it makes me cry, that pretty story. [Lays down her 
bonnet on table — goes to glass — takes off cap and spectacles — 
arranges her hair — Clarence has got on chair looking at her?\ 

K. — By Jove ! I know who it is now ! Remember her as 
well as possible. Four years ago, when little Foxbury used to 
dance in the ballet over the water. Don't I remember her ! 
She boxed my ears behind the scenes, by jingo. [Coming for- 
ward^ Miss Pemberton ! Star of the ballet ! Light of the 
harem ! Don’t you remember the grand Oriental ballet of the 
‘‘ Bulbul and the Peri ? ” 

Miss P. Oh ! [screams l\ No, n — no, sir. You are mis- 
taken : my name is Prior. I — never was at the Coburg 
Theatre.” I 

K. [seizing her handl] — No, you don’t, though ! What ! 
don’t you remember well that little hand slapping this face ? 
which nature hadn’t then adorned with whiskers, by gad ! You 
pretend you have forgotten little Foxbury, whom Charley Cal- 
verley used to come after, and who used to drive to the 
Coburg ” every night in her brougham. How did you know 
it was the “ Coburg ? ” That is a good one 1 Had you there, 
I think. 

Miss P. — Sir, in the name of heaven, pity me ! I have to 
keep my mother and my sisters and my brothers. When — 
when you saw me, we were in great poverty ; and almost all 
the wretched earnings I made at that time were given to my 
poor father then lying in the Queen’s Bench hard by. You 
know there was nothing against my character — you know there 
t as not. Ask Captain Touchit whether I was not a good 
girl. It was he who brought me to this house. 

K. — ^Touchit ! the old villain 1 

Miss P. — I had your sister’s confidence. I tended her 
abroad on her death-bed. I have brought up your nephew and 
niece. Ask any one if I have not been honest ? As a man* 
as a gentleman, I entreat vou to keep my secret ! I implore 
you for the sake of my poor mother and her children ! [kneeling.] 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB. 


649 

K. — By Jove ! how handsome you are ! How crying be- 
comes your eyes ! Get up ; get up. Of course I’ll keep your 
secret, but 

Miss P. — Ah ! ah ! [SAe screams as he tries to embrace her. 
Howell rushes m.] 

Howell. — Hands off, you little villain ! Stir a step, and 
I’ll kill you, if you were a regiment of Captains ! What ! insult 
this lady who kept watch at your sister’s death-bed and has 
took charge of her children ! Don’t be frightened. Miss Prior, 
Julia — dear, dear Julia — I’m by you. If the scoundrel touches 
you. I’ll kill him. I — I love you — there — it’s here — love you 
madly — with all my ’art — my a-heart ! 

Miss P. — Howell — for heaven’s sake, Howell ! 

K. — Pooh — ooh ! [bursting 7mth laughter\ Here’s ^ novel, 
by jingo ! Here’s John in love with the governess. Fond of 
plush. Miss Pemberton — ey ? Gad, it’s the best thing I ever 
knew. Saved a good bit, ey, Jeames ? Take a public-house ? 
By Jove ! I’ll buy my beer there. 

John.— Owe for it, you mean. I don’t think your tradesmen 
profit much by your custom, ex-Cornet Kicklebury. 

K. — By Jove ! I’ll do for you, you villain ! 

John. — No, not that way, Captain. [Struggles with and 
throws himl\ 

K. — [screamsl\ — Hallo, Bulkeley ! [Bulkeley is seen strolling 
in the garden. 

Enter Bulkeley. 

Bulkeley. — What is it, sir .? 

K. — Take this confounded villain off me, and pitch him into 
the Thames — do you hear? 

John. — Come here, and I’ll break every bone in your 
hulking body. [To Bulkeley.] 

Bulkeley. — Come, come ! what hever his hall this year row 
about ? 

Miss P. — For heaven’s sake, don’t strike that poor man. 

Bulkeley. — You be quiet. What’s he a-hittin’ about my 
master for ? 

John. — Take off your hat, sir, when you speak to a lady. 
[Takes jip a poker And now come on both of you, cowards ! 
[Rushes at Bulkeley and knocks his hat off his head.'] 

Bulkeley [stepping back]. — If you’ll put down that there 
poker, you know, then I’ll pitch into you fast enough. But 
that there poker ain’t fair, you know. 

K. — You villain ! of course you will leave this house. And, 


THE WOL VES AND THE LAMB. 


650 

Miss Prior, I think you understand that you will go too. I don’t 
think my niece wants to learn dancin\ you understand. Good^ 
by. Here, Bulkeley ! [Ge^s behind footnian and cxit?^ 

Miss P. — Do you know the meaning of that threat, Mr. 
Howell ? 

John. — Yes, Miss Prior. 

Miss P . — I was a dancer once, for three months, four years 
ago, .when my poor father was in prison. 

John. — Yes, Miss Prior, I knew it. And I saw you a many 
times. 

Miss P. — And you kept my secret ? 

John. — Yes, Ju — ^Jul — Miss Prior. 

Miss P. — Thank you, and God bless you, John Howell. 
There, there. You mustn’t! indeed, you mustn’t! 

John. — You don’t remember the printer’s boy who used to 
come to Mr. O’Reilly, and sit in your ’all in Bury Street, Miss 
Prior ? I was that boy. I was a country-bred boy — that is if 
you call Putney country, and Wimbledon Common and that. 
1 served the Milliken family seven years. I went with Master 
Horace to college, and then I revolted against service, and 1 
thought I’d be a man and turn printer like Doctor Frankling. 
And I got in an office : and I went with proofs to Mr. O’Reilly, 
and I saw you. And though I might have been in love with 
somebody else before I did — yet it was all hup when I saw 
you. 

Miss P. [hind/y ,'] — You must not talk to me in that way, 
John Howell. 

John. — Let’s tell the tale out. I couldn’t stand the news- 
paper night-work. I had a mother and brother and sisters to 
keep, as you had. I went back to Horace Milliken and said. 
Sir, I’ve lost my work. I and mine want bread. Will you 
take me back again ? And he did. He’s a kind, kind soul is 
my master. 

Miss P. — He is a kind, kind soul. 

John. — He’s good to all the poor. His hand’s in his pocket 
for everybody. Everybody takes advantage of him. His 
mother-in-lor rides over him. So does his Ma. So do I, I 
may say ; but that’s over now ; and you and I have had our 
notice to quit. Miss, I should say. , 

Miss P. — Yes. 

John. — I have saved a bit of money — not much — a hun- 
dred pound. Miss Prior — Julia — here I am — look — I’m a poor 
feller — a poor servant — but I’ve the heart of a man — and — I 
love you — oh ! I love you ! 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB , 651 

Mary. — Oh — ho — ho ! \Mary has entered from garden^ and 
hursts out crying?^ 

Miss P. — It can’t be, John Howell — my dear, brave, kind 
John Howell. It can’t be. I have watched this for some time 
past, and poor Mary’s despair here. \Kisses Mary^ who cries 
plentifully?)^ You have the heart of a true, brave man, and 
must show it and prove it now. I am not — am not of your — 
pardon me for saying so — of your class in life. I was bred by 
my uncle, away from my poor parents, though I came back to 
them after his sudden death ; and to poverty, and to this de- 
pendent life I am now leading. I am a servant, like you, John, 
but in another sphere — have to seek another place now ; and 
heaven knows if I shall procure one, now that that unlucky 
passage in my life is known. Oh, the coward to recall it ! the 
coward ! 

Mary. — But John whopped him. Miss! that he did. He 
gave it to him well, John did. \(?rying?\ 

Miss P. — You can’t — ^you ought not to forego an attach- 
ment like that, John Howell. A more honest and true-hearted 
creature never breathed than Mary Barlow. 

John. — N o, indeed. 

Miss P. — She has loved you since she was a little child. 
And you loved her once, and do now, John. 

Mary. — Oh, Miss ! you hare a hangel, — I hallways said you 
were a hangel. 

Miss P. — You are - better than I am, my dear — much, much 
better than I am, John. The curse of my poverty has been 
that I have had to flatter and to dissemble, and hide the faults 
of those I wanted to help, and to smile when I was hurt, and 
laugh when I was sad, and to coax, and to tack, and to bide 
my time, — not with Mr. Milliken : he is all honor, and kind- 
ness, and simplicity. Who did he ever injure, or what unkind 
word did he ever say ? But do you think, with the jealousy of 
those poor ladies over his house, I could have stayed here 
without being a hypocrite to both of them? Go, John. My 
good, dear friend, John Howell, marry Mar}^ You’ll be hap- 
pier with her than with me. There I There ! \They cmbi'acc?\ 

Mary. — O — o — o ! I think I’ll go and hiron hoiit Miss 
Harabella’s frocks now. \Exit Mary.] 

Enter Milliken with Clarence — ivho is explaining things to 

him. 

Clarence. — Here they are, I give you my word of honor. 
Ask ’em, damn ’em. 42 


652 


WOLVES AND THE LAAfB. 


Milliken, — What is this I hear? You, John Howell, have 
dared to strike a gentleman under iny roof ! Your master’s 
brother-in-law ? 

John. — Yes, by Jove ! and I’d do it again. 

Milliken. — Are you drunk or mad, Howell ? 

John. — I’m as sober and as sensible as ever I was in my 
life, sir — I not only struck the master, but I struck the man, 
who’s twice as big, only not quite as big a coward, I think. 

Milliken. — Hold your scurrilous tongue, sir ! My good 
nature ruins everybody about me. Make up your accounts. 
Pack your trunks — and never let me see your face again. 

John, — Very good, sir. 

Milliken. — I suppose. Miss Prior, you will also be disposed 
to — to follow Mr. Howell ? 

Miss P. — To quit you, now you know what has passed? I 
never supposed it could be otherwise — I deceived you, Mr. 
Milliken — as I kept a secret from you, and must pay the pen- 
alty. It is a relief to me, the sword has been hanging over me. 
I wish I had told your poor wife, as I was often minded to do. 

Milliken. — Oh, you were minded to do it in Italy, were 
you ? 

Miss P. — Captain Touchit knew it, sir, all along : and that 
my motives and, thank God, my life were honorable. 

Milliken. — Oh, Touchit knew it, did he ? and thought it 
honorable — honorable, Ha ! ha ! to marry a footman — and 
keep a public-house? I — I beg your pardon, John Howell — I 
mean nothing against you, you know. You’re an honorable 
man enough, except that you have been damned insolent to my 
brother-in-law. 

John. — Oh, heaven ! [John strikes his forehead^ and walks 
away?^ 

Miss P. — You mistake me, sir. What I wished to speak of 
was the fact which this gentleman haS no doubt communicated 
to you — that I danced on the stage for three months. 

Milliken. — Oh, yes. Oh, damme, yes. I forgot. I wasn’t 
thinking of that. 

Kicklebury. — You see she owns it. 

Miss P. — We were in the depths of poverty. Our furniture 
and lodging-house under - execution — from which Captain 
Touchit, when he came to know of our difficulties, nobly after- 
wards released us. My father was in prison, and wanted 
shillings for medicine, and I — I went and danced on the stage. 

Milliken.— W ell ? 

Miss P, — And I kept the secret afterwards \ knowing that 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB, 653 

I could never hope as governess to obtain a place after having 
been a stage-dancer. 

Milliken. — O f course you couldn^t, — it’s out of the ques- 
tion ; and may I ask, are you going to resume that delightful 
profession when you enter the married state with Mr. Howell ? 

Miss P. — Poor John ! it is not I who am going to — that is, 
it’s Mary, the schoolroom maid. 

Milliken. — E ternal blazes ! Have you turned Mormon, 
John Howell, and are you going to marry the whole house ? 

John. — I made a hass of myself about Miss Prior. I couldn’t 
help her being 1 — 1 — lovely. 

Kick. — G ad, he proposed to her in my presence. 

John. — W hat I proposed to her, Cornet Clarence Kickle- 
bury, was my heart and my honor, and my best, and my every- 
thing — and you — you wanted to take advantage of her secret, 
and you offered her indignities, and you laid a cowardly hand 
on her — a cowardly hand ! — and I struck you, and I’d do it 
again. 

Milliken. — W hat? Is this true? \Turning roimd very 
fiercely to K.] 

Kick.— G ad! Well— I only 

Milliken. — Y ou only what ? You only insulted a lady 
under my roof — the friend and nurse of your dead sister — the 
guardian of my children. You only took advantage of a de- 
fenceless girl, and would have extorted your infernal pay out of 
her fear. You miserable sneak and coward ! 

Kick. — H allo ? Come, come I I say I won’t stand this 
sort of chaff. Dammy, I’ll send a friend to you I 

Milliken. — G o out of that window, sir. March ! or I will 
tell my servant, John Howell, to kick you out, you wretched 
little scamp ! Tell that big brute, — what’s-his-name } — Lady 
Kicklebury’s man, to pack this young man’s portmanteau and 
bear’s-grease pots ; and if ever you enter these doors again, 
Clarence Kicklebury, by the heaven that made me 1 — by your 
sister who is dead 1 — I will cane your life out of your bones. 
Angel in heaven ! Shade of my Arabella — to think that your 
brother in your house should be found to insult the guardian of 
your children I 

John. — B y jingo, you’re a good-plucked one I I knew he 
was. Miss, — I told you he was. \Exit^ shakmg hands with his 
master^ aiid with Miss P., arid dancing for joy. Exit Clarence, 
scared, out of wmdow?^ 

John \yvithout\. — Bulkeley 1 pack up the Captain’s luggage ! 

Milliken. — How can I ask your pardon, Miss Prior ? In 


654 WOLVES AND THE LAMB. 

my wife’s name I ask it — in the name of that angel whose 
dying-bed you watched and soothed — of the innocent children 
whom you have faithfully tended since. 

Miss P. — Ah, sir ! it is granted when you speak so to me. 

Milliken. — Eh, eh — d — don’t call me sir ! 

Miss P. — It is jEor me to ask pardon for hiding what you 
know now : but if I had told you — you — you never would have 
taken me into your house — your wife never would. 

Milliken. — No, no. [lVee/>mg.] 

Miss P. — My dear, kind Captain Touchit knows it all. It 
was by his counsel I acted. He it was who relieved our dis- 
tress. Ask him whether my conduct was not honorable — ask 
him whether my life was not devoted to my parents — ask him 
when — when I am gone. 

Milliken. — When you are gone, Julia ! Why are you 
going ? Why should you go, my love — that is — why need you 
go, in the devil’s name ? 

Miss P. — Because, when your mother — when your mother- 
in-law come to hear that your children’s governess has been a 
dancer on the stage, they will send me away, and you will not 
have the power to resist them. They ought to send me away, 
sir ; but I have acted honestly by the children and their poor 
mother, and you’ll think of me kindly when — I — am — ^gone ? 

Milliken. — Julia, my dearest — dear — noble-r-dar the 

devil ! here’s old Kicklebury. 

Enter Lady K., Children, and Clarence. 

Lady K. — So, Miss Prior ! this is what I hear, is it ? A 
dancer in my house ! a serpent in my bosom — poisoning — ^yes, 
poisoning those blessed children ! occasioning quarrels between 
my own son and my dearest son-in-law ; flirting with the foot- 
man ! When do you intend to leave, madam, the house which 
you have po — poll — luted ? 

Miss P. — I need no hard language. Lady Kicklebury : and 
I will reply to none. I have signified to Mr. Milliken my wish 
to leave his house. 

Milliken. — Not, not, if you will stay. \To Miss P.] 

Lady K. — Stay, Horace ! she shall 7iever stay as governess 
in this house ! 

Milliken. — Julia! will you stay as mistress? You have 
known me for a year alone — before, not so well — when the 
house had a mistress that is gone. ^ ou know what my temper 
is, and that my tastes are simple, and my heart not unkind. I 
have watched you, and have never seen you out of temper, 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB. 655 

though you have been tried. I have long thought you good 
and beautiful, but I never thought to ask the question which I 
put to you now : — come in, sir ! \to Clarence at door\ : — now 
that you have been persecuted by those who ought to have up- 
held you, and insulted by those who owed you gratitude and 
respect. I am tired of their domination, and as weary of a 
man’s cowardly impertinence \to Clarence] as of a woman’s 
jealous tyranny. They have made what was my Arabella’s 
home miserable by their oppression and their quarrels. Julia ! 
iny wife’s friend, my children’s friend! be mine, and make me 
happy! Don’t leave me, Julia! say you won’t — say you won’t 
— dearest — dearest girl ! 

Miss P. — I won’t — leave — you. 

George \i.mthout\ — Oh, I say ! Arabella, look here : here’s 
papa a-kissing Miss Prior ! 

Lady K. — Horace — Clarence my son ! Shade of my Ara- 
bella ! can you behold this horrible scene, and not shudder in 
heaven ! Bulkeley ! Clarence ! go for a doctor — go to Doctor 
Straitwaist at the Asylum — Horace Milliken, who has married 
the descendant of the Kickleburys of the Conqueror, marry a 
dancing-girl off the stage ! Horace Milliken ! do you wish to 
see me die in convulsions at your feet? I writhe there, I 
grovel there. Look ! look at me on my knees ! your own 
mother-in-law ! drive away this fiend ! 

Milliken. — H em ! I ought to thank you, Lady Kicklebufy, 
for it is you that have given her to me. 

Lady K. — He won’t listen ! he turns away and kisses her 
horrible hand. This will never do : help me up, Clarence, I 
must go and fetch his mother. Ah, ah ! there she is, there she 
is ! [Lady K. rushes out., as the top of a barouche., with Mr. and 
Mrs. Bonnington and Coachman, is seen over the gat ei^ 

Mrs. B. — What is this I hear, my son, my son? You are 
going to marry a — a stage-dancer ? you are driving me mad, 
Horace ! 

Milliken. — G ive me my second chance, mother, to be 
happy. You have had yourself two chances. 

Mrs. B. — Speak to him, Mr. Bonnington. [Bonnington 
makes du 7 nb sho 7 v?\^ 

Lady K. — Implore him, Mr. Bonnington. 

Mrs. B. — Pray, pray for him, Mr. Bonnington, my love— 
my lost, abandoned boy ! 

Lady K. — Oh, my poor dear Mrs. Bonnington ! 

Mrs. B. — Oh, my poor dear Lady Kicklebury. \They em- 
brace each other i\ 


656 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB. - 


Lady K. — I have been down on my knees to him, dearest 
Mrs. Bonnington. 

Mrs. B. — Let us both — both go down on our knees — I will 
\to her husbafui], Edward, I will I [Both ladies on their knees. 
Bonnington zuith outstretched hands belwid the7nl\ Look, un- 
happy boy ! look, Horace ! two mothers on their wretched knees 
before you, imploring you to send away this monster ! Speak 
to him, Mr. Bonnington. Edward ! use authority with him, if 
he will not listen to bis mother — 

Lady K. — To his mothers ! 

Enter Touchit. 

Touchit. — What is this comedy going on, ladies and gentle- 
men ? The ladies on their elderly knees — Miss Prior with her 
hair down her back. Is it tragedy or comedy — is it a rehearsal 
for a charade, or are we acting for Horace’s birthday ? or, oh ! 
— I beg your Reverence’s pardon — you were perhaps going to 
a professional duty ? 

Mrs. B. — It’s we who are praying this child, Touchit. This 
child, with whom you used to come home from Westminster 
when you were boys. You have influence with him; he listens 
to you. Entreat him to pause in his madness. 

Touchit. — What madness ? 

Mrs. B. — That — that woman — that serpent yonder — that — 
that dancing-woman, whom you introduced to Arabella Milli- 
ken, — ah ! and I rue the day : — Horace is going to mum — mum 
— marry her ! 

Touchit. — Well ! I always thought he would. Ever since I 
saw him and her playing at whist together, when I came down 
here a month ago, I thought he would do it. 

Mrs. B. — Oh, it’s the whist, the whist ! Why did I ever 
play at whist, Edward ! My poor Mr. Milliken used to like 
his rubber. 

Touchit. — Since he has been a widower 

Lady K. — A widower of that angel 1 [Fomts to picture?^ 

Touchit. — Pooh, pooh, angel ! You ladies have never 
given the poor fellow any peace. You were always quarrelling 
over him. You took possession of his house, bullied his ser- 
vants, spoiled his children ; you did. Lady Kicklebury. 

Lady K. — Sir, you are a rude, low, presuming, vulgar man. 
Clarence ! beat this rude man ! 

Touchit. — From what I have heard of your amiable son, he 
is not in the warlike line, I think. My dear Julia, I am delighted 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB, 657 

with all my heart that my old friend should have found a wo- 
man of sense, good conduct, good temper — a woman who has 
had many trials, and borne them with great patience — to take 
charge of him and make him happy. Horace ! give me your 
hand ! I knew Miss Prior in great poverty. I am sure she 
will bear as nobly her present good fortune ; for good fortune 
it is to any woman to become the wife of such a loyal, honest, 
kindly gentleman as you are ! 

Enter John. 

John. — If you please, my lady — if you please, sir — Bulke- 
ley 

Lady K. — What of Bulkeley, sir ? 

John. — He has packed his things, and Cornet Kicklebury’s 
things, my lady. 

Milliken. — L et the fellow go. 

John. — He won’t go, sir, till my lady have paid him his 
book and wages. Here’s the book, sir. 

Lady K. — Insolence ! quit my presence ! And I, Mr. Milli- 
ken, will quit a house 

John. — Shall I call your ladyship a carriage 1 

Lady K. — Where I have met with rudeness, cruelty, and 
fiendish \to Miss P., who smiles a7id curtseys'\ — yes, fiendish in- 
gratitude. I wdl go, I say, as soon as I have made arrange- 
ments for taking other lodgings. You cannot expect a lady of 
fashion to run out like a servant. 

John. — Hire the ‘‘Star and Garter” for her, sir. Send 
down to the “ Castle anything to get rid of her. I’ll tell her 
maid to pack her traps. Pinhorn ! \Beckofis maid and gives 
order's l\ 

Touchit. — You had better go at once, my dear Lady Kickle- 
bury. 

Lady K.— Sir ! 

Touchit. — The other mother-in-law is coming \ I met her 
on the road with her family. He ! he ! he ! [^Screams,'] 

Enter Mrs. Prior and Children. 

Mrs. P. — My Lady ! I hope your ladyship is quite well ! 
Dear, kind Mrs. Bonnington ! I came to pay my duty to you, 
ma’am. This is Charlotte, my Lady — the great girl whom 
your ladyship so kindly promised the gown for; and this is my 
little girl, Mrs. Bonnington, ma’am, please ; and this is my 
little Blueco.at boy. Go and speak to dear, kind Mr, Milliken 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB, 


658 

— our best friend and protector — the son and son-in-law of 
these dear ladies. Look, sir ! He has brought his copy to show 
you. [Boy shows copy^ Ain’t it creditable to a boy of his age, 
Captain Touchit 1 And my best and most grateful services to 
you, sir. Julia, Julia, my dear, where’s your cap and spectacles, 
you stupid thing You’ve let your hair drop down. What 1 
what ! — \Bcgins to he puzzled^ 

Mrs. B. — Is this collusion, madam ! 

Mrs. P. — Collusion, dear Mrs. Bonnington ! 

Lady K. — Or insolence, Mrs. Prior 

Mrs. P. — Insolence, your ladyship ! What — what is it 1 
what has happened.^ What’s Julia’s hair down for Ah! 
you’ve not sent the poor girl away the poor, poor child, and 
the poor, poor children 1 

'roucHiT. — That dancing at the ‘‘ Coburg ” has come out, 
^Irs. Prior. 

Mrs. P. — Not the darling’s fault. It was to help her poor 
father in prison. It was I who forced her to doit. Oh ! don’t, 
don’t, dear Lady Kicklebury, take the bread out of the mouth 
of these poor orphans I {Crying?^ 

Milliken. — Enough* of this, Mrs. Prior: your daughter is 
not going away. Julia has promised to stay with me — and — 
never to leave me — as governess no longer, but as wife to me. 

Mrs. P. — Is it — is it true, Julia ? 

Miss P. — Yes, mamma. 

?vIrs. P. — Oh ! oh ! oh I S^FUngs down her umbrella^ kisses 
Julia, aJid ^nmnhig to Milliken,] My son, my son I Come 
here, children. Come, Adolphus, Amelia, Charlotte — kiss 
your dear brother, children. What, my dears 1 How do you 
do, dears ? \to Milliken’s childreJ 2 \ Have they heard the 
news ? And do you know that my daughter is going to l.'^c 
your mamma ? There — there — go and play with your little 
uncles and aunts, that’s good children 1 [She motions off the 
Cliildren, who 7'ctire towards garde?!. Her ?nanncr changes to 
one of great pat?'onage and intense satisfaction.'] Most hot weather 
your ladyship. I’m sure. Mr. Bonnington, you must find it hot 
weather for preachin’ I Lor’ 1 there’s that little wretch beatin 
Adolphus ! George, sir ! have done, sir ! [Hims to separate 
the??ii\ How ever shall we make those children agree, Julia } 

Miss P. — They have been a little spoiled, and I think Mr. 
Milliken will send George and Arabella to school, mamma : 
will you not, Horace.? 

AIr. MiLiJKEN. — I think school will be the very best thing 
for them, 


THE WOLVES AHD THE LAMB. 


6S9 

Mrs.’ P. — And [Mrs. P. whispers^ pointing to her own chil- 
dren?^ the blue room, the green room, the rooms old Lady Kick 
has — plenty of rooms for us, my dear ! 

Miss P. — No, mamma, I think it will be too large a party, 
— Mr. Milliken has often said that he would like to go abroad, 
and I hope that now he will be able to make his tour. 

Mrs. P. — Oh, then ! we can live in the house, you know : 
what’s the use of payin’ lodgin’, my dear ? 

Miss P. — The house is going to be painted. You had best 
live in your own house, mamma ; and if you want anything, 
Horace, Mr. Milliken, I am sure, will make it comfortable for 
you. He has had too many visitors of late, and will like a 
more quiet life, I think. Will you not ? 

Milliken. — I shall like a life with^^^^, Julia. 

John. — Cab, sir, for her ladyship ! 

Lady K. — This instant let me go ! Call my people. Clar- 
ence, your arm ! Bulkeley, Pinhorn ! Mrs. Bonnington, I 
wish you good-morning ! Arabella, angel ! \looks at picture\ I 
leave you. I shall come to you ere long. \Exit, refusing Mil- 
liken’s hand^ passes up gar de7t., with her servants following her, 
Mary atid other servants of the hottse are collected together^ whom 
Lady K. waves off, Bluecoat boy on wall eatmg plums. Page, 
as she goes., cries ^ Hurray, hurray / Bluecoat boy cries, Hurray / 
Whe7i Lady K. is go7ie, John adva7ices?\ 

John. — I think I heard you say, sir, that it was your inten- 
tion to go abroad ? 

Milliken. — Yes ; oh, yes I Are we going abroad, my 
Julia? 

Miss P. — To settle matters, to have the house painted, and 
clear \foi 71 ting to childre7i, mother, 6^^.] Don’t you think it is 
the best thing that we can do ? 

IMilliken. — S urely, surely : we are going abroad. Howell, 
you will come with us of course, and with your experiences you 
will make a capital courier. Won’t Howell make a capital 
courier, Julia? Good, honest fellow, John Howell. Beg your 
pardon for being so rude to you just now. But my temper is 
very hot, very ! 

John \laughi7ig\, — You are a Tartar, sir. Such a tyrant ! 
isn’t he, ma’am ? 

Miss P.- — Well, no ; I don’t think you have a very bad 
temper, Mr. Milliken, a — Horace. 

John. — You must — take care of him — alone. Miss Prior — 
Julia — I mean Mrs. Milliken. Man and boy I’ve waited on 
him this fifteen year : with the exception of that trial at the 


66o 


THE JFOL VES AND THE LAMB. ' 


printing-office — which — which I won’t talk of noiv^ madam. I 
never knew him angry ; thougli mariy a time 1 have known him 
provoked. I never knew him say a hard word, though some- 
times perhaps we’ve deserved it. Not often — such a good 
master as that is pretty sure of getting a good servant — that i^s, 
if a man has a heart in his bosom ; and these things are found 
both in and out of livery. Yes, I Iiave been a honest servant 
to him, — haven’t I, Mr. Milliken ? 

jMilliken, — I ndeed, yes, Jolm. 

John. — And so has Mary Barlow. Mary, my dear ! \_Afary 
comes fonuard.'] Will you allow me to introduce }'ou, sir, to 
the futur’ Mrs. Howell.^ — if T>Ir. Bonnington doesjw/r little 
business for you, as I dare say \iuniiiig to Mr. B.], hold gov’nor, 
you will ! — Make it up with your poor son, Mrs. Bonnington, 
ma’am. You have took a second ’elpmate, why shouldn’t 
Master Horace ? Mrs. B.] He — he wants somebody to help 
him, and take care of him, more than you do. 

Touchit. — You never spoke a truer word in your life, 
Howell. 

John. — It’s my general ’abit, Capting, to indulge in them 
sort of statements. A true friend 1 have been to my master, 
and a true friend I’ll remain when he’s my master no more. 

MifXiKEN. — Why, John, you are not going to leave me ? 

John. — It’s best, sir, I should go. I — I’m not fit to be a 
servant in this house any longer. I wish to sit in my own little 
home, with my own little wife by my side. Poor dear ! you’ve 
no conversation, Mary, but you’re a good little soul. We’ve 
saved a hundred pound apiece, and if we want more, I know 
who won’t grudge it us, a good feller — a good master — for 
whom I’ve sa'ved many a luindred pound myself, and will take' 
tlie “ Milliken Arms ” at old Pigeoncot — and once a year or so, 
at this hanniversary, we will pay our respects to you, sir, and 
madam. Perliaps we will bring some children with us, perhaps 
we will find some more in this villa. Bless ’em beforehand ! 
Good-by, sir, and madam — come away, Mary ! \goi;ig\ 

Mrs. P. [entering 7oith clothes^ — She has not left a 
single thing in her room. Amelia, come here 1 this cloak will 
do capital for you, and this — this garment is the very thing for 
Adolphus. Oh, John ! eh, Howell ! will you please to see that 
my children have something to eat, immediately ! The MiP 
liken children, I suppose, have dined already? 

John. — Yes, ma’am ; certainly,* ma’am. 

Mrs. P. — I see he is inclined to be civil to me now / 

Miss P. — John Howell is about to leave us, mamma. He 


THE WOLVES AND THE LAMB. 66 1 

is engaged to Mary Barlow, and when we go away, he is going 
to set up housekeeping for himself. Good-by, and thank you, 
John Howell \^gives her hand io John, but with great reserve of 
ma?i7ief\ You have been a kind and true friend to us — if ever 
we can serve you, count upon us — may he not, Mr. Milliken ? 

Milliken. — Always, always. 

Miss P. — But you will still wait upon us — upon Mr. Mih 
liken, for a day or two, won’t you, John ? until we — until Mr. 
Milliken has found some one to replace you. He will never 
find any one more honest than you, and good, kind little Mary. 
Thank you, Mary, for your goodness to the poor governess. 

Mary. — Oh, miss ! oh, mum ! [Miss P. kisses Mary patron- 
izing!)^. 

Miss P. \to John]. — And after they have had some refresh- 
ment, get a cab for my brothers and sisters, if you please, John. 
Don’t you think that will be best, my — my dear 1 

Milliken. — Of course, of course, dear Julia ! 

Miss P. — And, Captain Touchit, you will stay, I hope, and 
dine with Mr. Milliken ? And, Mrs. Bonnington, if you will 
receive as a daughter one who has always had a sincere regard 
for you, i think you will aid in making your son happy, as 1 
promise you with all my heart and all my life to endeavor to 
do. [Miss P. and M. go up to Mrs. Bonnington.] 

Mrs. Bonnington. — Well, there then, since it must be^so, 
bless you, my children. 

Touchit. — Spoken like a sensible woman ! And now, as I 
do not wish to interrupt this felicity, I will go and dine at the 
‘‘ Star and Garter.” 

Miss P. — My dear Captain Touchit, not for worlds! 
Don't you know 1 mustn’t be alone with Mr. Milliken until — • 
until 

iliLLiKEN. — Until I am made the happiest man alive! 
And you will come down and see us often, Touchit, won’t you 'i 
And we hope to see our friends here often. And we will have 
a little life and spirit and gayety in the place. Oh, mother ! 
oh, George ! oh, Julia ! what a comfort it is to me to think that 
I am released from the tyranny of that terrible mother-in-law ! 

Mrs. Prior. — Come in to your teas, children. Come this 
moment, I say. \The Children pass^ quarrellmg behind the 
characters, Mrs. Prior, siunmoning them; John and Mary 
sta?iding o?i each side of the dinmg-room door as tJie curtain falls ^ 



ENOCH BrOEGAN’S SONS’ 



CLEANS 

WINDOWS. 
MABBLi B. 

KNIVEa 

POLISHES _ 

tin-ware, 

IBON,STEEL.&0. 



Q-aa-AjtrnD, ^asno xtpk-ig-ht :e>x-a_isj os. 

The demands now made by an educated musical pu])lic ar© so 
exacting, that very few pi. no-forte manufacturers can produce instru- 
ments that will stand the test which merit requires. 

SoiiMEB & Co., as manufacturers, rank among tliis chosen few, 
who are acknowledged to be makers of standard instriimentf*. In 
these days when many manufacturers urge the low price of their 
wares, rather than their superior quality, as an inducement to pur- 
chase, it may not be amiss to suggest that, in a piano, quality and 
price are too inseparably joined, to expect the one without the other. 

Every piano ought to be judged as to the quality of its tone, its 
touch, and its workmanship; if any one of these is wanting in excel- 
lence, however good the others may be, the instrument will be imper- 
fect. It is the combination of all these qualities in the highest degree 
that constitutes the perfect piano, and it is such a combination, as has 
given the S QHMER its hono rable posit ion with the trade and public. 
~ Pricesas reasonableasconsistent 

with the Highest Standard. 

MANUFACTURERS, 

l49tol55Eastl4tliSt,N.Y. 



STANDARD PUBLICATIONS. 


Ohas. Dickens’ Complete Works, 
15 Vole., l'2mo, cloth, $22.50. 

W. M. Thackeray's Complete 
Works, II Vole., 12iiio, cloth, gilt, 
Jia.50. 

JOHN W. 


George Eliot’s Complete Works* 
8 Vols., 12mo, cloth, gilt, $10.00. 
l^lutarch’s Dives of niustriouH 
Men, 3 Vois., 12mo. cloth, gilt. 
$4.50. 

LOVELL CO., Publishers,, 

14 AND 16 Vesby Street, New York. 


STANDARD PUBLICATIONS. 


Bolllns’ Ancient History, 4 Vols., 
12mo, cloth, gilt, $6.00. 

Ohafles Knight’s Popular His- 
tory of England, 8 Yols., 12mo, 
Ciot^ gilt top, $12.00. 


Lovell’s Series of Hed Lina 
Poets, 50 Volumes of all the best 
works of the world’s great Poets. 
Tennyson, Shakespere, Milton, Mere- 
dith, Ingelow, Ihroctor, Scott, Byroa, 
Dante, &c. $1.25 pe® volume. 


JOHN W. LOVEI.L CO., Publishers, 

14 AND 16 Vbsey Stubbt, New Yoa» 




KEYSTOEIE ORGAN. Market. Price reduced 

from $175 to $125. Acclimatized case. Anti-Shoddy and Anti-Monopoly. Kot all case, 
stops, top and advertisement. Warranted for 6 years. Has the Excelsior 18-Stop 
Combination, embracing : Diapason, Flute, JIclodia-Forte, Yiolina, Aeolina, Viola, 
nute-Dorte, Celeste, Dulcet, Echo, Mclodia, Celestina, Octave Coupler, Tremelo, 
Sub-Eass, Cello, Grand-Org-an Air Brake, Grand-Org-an Swell. Two Knee- 
Stops. This is a Walnut case, with Music Balcony, Sliding Desk, Side Handles, &c. 
Dimensions : Height, 75 inches; Length, 48 inches; Depth, 21 inches. This 5-Octavo 
Organ, with Stool, Book and Music, we wdll box and deliver at dock in New York, fof 
$125. Send by express, prepaid, check, or registered letter to 

DIOKINSOIT & CO., Pianos and Organs, 

19 West nth Street, New York. 


j 



LOVELL’S LIBRARY-CATALOGUE. 


113. More Wordf^ About the Bible, 1 

by Rev Jas. S. Bunh 20 I 

114. M Lecoq Guboriau i.*t. I. 20 

Monsieur Lecoq, Pt, II 20 

115. An Outline of Irish History, by | 

Justin II McCarthy 10 

116. TheLoroi)ge Case, by Gaboriau .2*.) 

117. Paul Clifford, by Lord Lyf lOii. . .20 
Ilk A New Lease of Life, by A bout. .20 

119. B 'Url)<)n Lilies 20 

120. Otncr People s Money, Gaboriau 20 

121. The Lady of Lyons, Lyiton...]0 

122. Ameiine de Bourg 15 

123. A Sea Queen, by W. Russell — 20 

124. The Ladies Lindores, by Mrs. 

Ollnhant. . , : . 20 

125. Haunted Hearts, by Simpson ...10 

126. Loy-j, l ord Beresford, by The 

Duchess . 20 

127^ Pnder Two Flags, Ouida, Pt. I \T> 

Under Two Flags, Pt. II 15 

12S. Money by Lord l>ytton . .... 10. 

129. In Peril of llis Tdfe, by Caboriau.20 

130. India, by Max Muller, 20 

131. Jets an (1 Flashes . ...: 20 

131. Moonshine and Marguerites, by 

The Duche.s8 .. 10 

133. Mr. Scarborough's Fan v by 

Anthony Trollope, T5« i .15 
Mr. Scarborough's FainOy. PtIT 15 

134. Arden, by A. Mary F Pobinson.lo 

1.35. The Tower of Perceaiont 20 

106. Yolande, by Wm. Biaek 20 

137. Cruel Loudon by Jo.'^eph TTatton.St) 

138. The Gilded (H cpie. by GaboriHu.20 

139. Pike < ounty Foik.s, R II. Mott. .20 

1 10. Cricket on the Ile.arth 10 

Ml. Henry Esmond, by Thackeray . .20 
142. Strange Adventnres of a Phae- 
ton, oy Wm. Black iJO 

M3. Denis D.uval, by Thackeray 10 

144. Old Curiosity Shop, Dickens, Pt 1.15 
Old Curioeuy Shop, Part II. . . .15 

145. Ivanhoe, by Scott, Part 1 15 

Ivanhoe, by Scott, Part II 15 

146. White Wings, by MTn. Black. . 20 

147. The Sketch Book, by Irving 20 

148. Catherine, by W. M Thackeray 10 

149. Janet’s itepentance. by Eliot 10 

150. Barnaby Rudge, Dickens, Pt 1. . 15 

Barnahy Rudge, Part II 15 

151. Felix Holt, by George Eliot 20 

152. Richelieu, by Lord Lvtton 10 

153. Sunrise, by Wm. Black, Part I. . 15 
Sunrise, by Wm. Black. Part 11,15 

154. Tour of the World in 80 Days,. 20 

155. Mystery of Orcival, Gaboriau . . .20 

156. Lovel, the WTdower,. by W. M. 

Thackeray 10 

157. Romantic Adventures of a Milk- 

maid. by Th<'mas Hardy : .10 

158. David Copperfield, Dickens, Pt 1.20 

David Copperfie'd, i art IT. 20 

160. Rienzi, by Lord Lytton, Part I. 15 
Rienzi, by Lord Lytton, Part II. 15 

161. Promise of Marriage, Gaboriau.. 10 

162. Faith and Unfaith, by The 

Duchess ;.20 


163 . 

101 . 

105. 

OG. 

167 . 

100 . 

169 . 

170 . 

171 . 

172 . 

173 . 

174. 

175 

176 
i';7. 
i;8. 

179. 

180 . 
T81. 

1 >-' 2 . 

183. 

iSL 

185. 


186. 

’87. 

188. 

189. 

190. 

191. 

192 . 

193. 

. 194 . 

195. 

196. 

197. 

198 . 
i:'\ 


200 . 

201 . 


202 . 

^03. 

201 . 

205. 

206. 

207. 

208, 


The Happy Man, by Lover.. 10 

Barry Lyndon, by Thackeray 20 

Eyre’s Acquittal ... 10 

Twenty Thousand Leagues Un- 
der the Sea, by Jules Verne 20 

Anti-Slavery Days, by James 

Freeman Clarke 20 

Beauty’s Daughters, by The 

Duchess .20 

Beyond the Sunrise 20 

Hard Times, by Charles Dickens.20 
Tom Cringle's Log, by M. Scott.. 20 
Vanity Fair, by W.M.Thackeray.20 
Underground Russia, Stepniak..20 
Middleniarch, by Elliot, Pt I... 20 

^ iddlemarch. Part II 20 

Sir Tom, by Mrs. Oliphant/ 20 

Pelham, by Lord Lytton. 20 

'I'he Story of Ida 10 

Madc.'ip Violet, by Wm. Black.. 20 

The Little Pilgrim 10 

Kilmeny, by Wm. Black 20 

'Whi8t,or Bumblepui)py? 10 

The Beautiful Wretch. Bl.ack 20 

Her Mother’s Sin, by B. M. Ciay.20 
Green Pastures ana Piccadilly, 

by Wm Black 20 

The Mysterious Island, by Jules 

Verne, Part 1 . 15 

The Mysterious Island. Part II . .15 
The Mysterious Island, Part 111.15 
Tom Brow'n at Oxford, Part I. . ,15 
Tom Brown at Oxford, Part H. . 15 
’I’hicker than Water, by J. Payn.Si) 
In Silk Attire, by Wm. Black. ..20 
Scottish Cbiefs.Jane Porter, Pt. 1.20 

Scottif^h Chiefs, Part II 20 

Willy Reiily, by Will Carleton. 20 
The Nautz Family, by Shelley.20 
G'cat Expectations, by DickenB.20 
P uidennil9,by Thackeray, Part 1.20 
I eiidenni8,by Thackeray, Part 11.20 

Widow Bedott Papers 20 

Daniel I')eronda,Geo. Eliot, Pt. 1.20 

Daniel Deronda, Part 11 .20 

AltioraPeto, by Oliphan' 20 

By the Gate of the Sea, by David 

Christie Murray 15 

Tales of a Traveller, by Irving . .20 
Life and Voyages of Columbus, 
by Wa'<bingtt>n Irv ing, Part I. .20 
Lit^ and Voyages of Columbus, 
by Washington Irving, Part 11.20 

The Pilgrim’s Progiesi 20 

Martin Chuzzlewit, by Charles 

Dickens, Part I 20 

Martin Chuzzlewit, Part II 20 

Theophrastus Such, Geo. Eliot. . .20 
Disarmed, M. Bethara-Edwards..l5 
Kiigene Aram, by Lord Lytton. 20 
The Spanish Gypsy and Other® 

Poems, by George Eliot 20 

Cast Up by Hie bea Baker 20 

Mill on the Floss, Eliot. Pt. I. ..15 

3lill on the Floes, Part II. 15 

Brother Jacob, and Mr. GdfiPs 
Love Story, by George Eliot. . .10 
Wrecks in the Sea of Life 20 


BHAET AlTD ITEUVE POOD. 



COMPOSED OP THE NEBVE-GIVINa PRINCIPLES OP 
THE OX-BRAIN AND WHEAT-GERM. 


It restores the energy lost by Nervousness or Indigestion; relieves 
Lassitude and Neuralgia ; refreshes the nerves tired by worry, excite- 
ment, or excessive brain fatigue ; strengthens a failing memory, and 
gives renewed vigor in all diseases of Nervous Exhaustion or Debility. 
It is the only PREVENTIVE FOR CONSUMPTION. 

It aids mmderfvlly in the mental and hodily growth of infante and 
children. Under its use the teeth come easier, the hones grow better, the skin 
plumper and smoother; the brain acquires more readily , and rests and deem 
more sweetly. An Hi-fed brain learns no lessons, and is excusable if peevish. 
It gvoes a happier and better childhood. 

It is Tvith the utmost confidence that I recommend this excellent pre- 
paration for the relief of indigestion and for general debility; nay, I do more 
than recommend, 1 really urge all invalids to put it to the test, for in sev- 
eral cases personally known to me signal benefits have been derived from 
its use. I have recently watched its effects on a young friend who has 
suffered from indigestion all her life. After taking the Vitalized Phos- 
phites for a fortnight she said to me; * I feel another person; it is a pleas- 
ure to live.* Many hard-working men and women — especially those enga^d 
in brain work — would be saved from the fatal resort to chloral and other 
destructive stimulanti^ if they would have recourse to a remedy so simple 
and so efficacious. ** 

Emily Fatthfull. 

Phtsicians have prescribed over 600,000 Packages because they 
KNOW ITS Composition, that it is not a secret remedy, and 
THAT the formula IS PRINTED ON EVERY LABEL 

Por Sale Isy or fsy JMCall, #x. 

F. CE0SB7 CO., 661 and 666 Sixtli Avenue, New Tork. 


/ 


-■ 'f- 


















